In Symbiosis we trust
by MomotsukiNezumi
Summary: Loki fell into the Void alone, no weapons or help in sight. The dark things lurking at the edge of the universe have gone too long without a new tool to ignore a fallen god. Bit by bit, they prepare him for their needs. But they aren't patient, and the Trickster does not go down easily. When unexpected help comes, a hybrid is created...and they want their vengeance. Sevenshot. AU.
1. Reborn from Death

**A/N: This little crossover was created out of a "review the material" session of watching the _Spiderman _films, _The Avengers_, and the first _Thor _film again one night while on a Marvel spree, and wondering at the origins of the original Venom symbiote. After some research (in particular concerning the symbiote's species' abilities and origins), I was left with both a gnawing feeling of disappointment that the symbiote wasn't actually shown onscreen for over half of the film (and actually didn't seem to have several of its more interesting attributes, unfortunately), but also a rather odd question or two at the back of my mind: _The Venom symbiote was ostracized and deemed insane by its own species because it wanted to commit to its host instead of draining it to death, and was left trapped in a prison module on Battleworld to ensure it couldn't "contaminate" the rest of the gene pool, so if the symbiote managed to escape instead of ending up hitching a ride back to Earth on Peter, would it float about deep space for a while and then encounter something? If the Marvel universe has both the Avengers and Spiderman in contact with S.H.I.E.L.D., and the Nine Realms are confirmed to exist, then would the symbiote drift until, possibly, it encountered the edge of the universe...and by that, the Void, and those within, including Loki and the Chitauri? Given the "emotion-feeding/feeling" scenario, logically the symbiote would seek out something not endlessly hungry, crude, savage, and essentially a drone, nor would it want to be stuck with Thanos, as he's aggressive, dangerous, too self-concerned to agree to symbiosis, and (I think) rather insane, so that leaves only one other being..._**

**NOTE: This particular version of the Venom symbiote is being based, with several characteristic exceptions from the _Ultimate Marvel_ and _Planet of the Symbiotes _Universes, on the first Marvel portrayal: that is, a mute, lonely symbiote craving the company of a host, rather than the far more dangerous, on-and-off abusive, talking scary badass shown in the more recent comics and films. After all, the symbiote works off of the host's emotions. If it never made it to Earth (and thus never encountered Peter, and never had that entire fiasco happen), it likely wouldn't be bitter, angry, or murderous like how it was while bonded to its Earth hosts (although being bonded to people who all feel bitter hatred towards Peter/Spiderman could account for some of those negative emotions). Please assume, for the purpose of this story, that the symbiote has indeed escaped and is floating about in space when this story begins (also, I have no experience prior to this concerning writing from Venom's perspective, so I hope you aren't too confused or annoyed if the poor thing's OOC. I also have no writing experience for the Mad Titan, so please take the unpleasantness of his character at face value.). **

**Also, if any of you have read any of my other stories containing Loki, you will understand the stance I take on him. If not, please note that I am part of the "Torture/unwilling agreement/mind-control-due-to-constant-close-proximity-to-the-Mind-Gem led to trying to subjugate Earth for Thanos and the Other" party, and if this offends you, please leave and seek a story that is more to your tastes.**

**DISCLAIMER: I do not own Marvel's _The_ _Avengers_' characters/phrases,_ Spiderman_'s Venom, the heavy reference (with liberties taken) to the old Norse gods mythology of one of Loki's various punishments, or the old Norse fairytale __****Why the Bear Is Stumpy-Tailed.**_  
_

**WARNING: Descriptions of varying torture. Some foul language. Lots and lots of Loki-whump. Alternate take on what happened in the Void, and what came afterward.**

* * *

Was there a word for complete darkness, an unending terrain of floating, empty blank canvas, drenched in shadow and bereft of so much as a single glittering jewel of a star?

A word for a frigid, piercing cold that burrowed down into flesh and gnawed through bones like an army of parasites?

A word for this sickening feeling of ceaseless, horrific _unmaking_?

He did not know how long he had been here; time passed differently in the Void. Days could be seconds, hours could be weeks, minutes that passed into decades, months changing into years. Temporal alignment had long since mutated from a quiet, orderly flow into a confusing jumble of displacement that could wobble, solid but gelatinous as molasses, and easily melt and twist into aching parodies of what could once pass for reliable continuum.

They were creative, he would give them that.

He had fallen to this place, landing in a shattered heap of bone and skin upon unforgiving ground, and awoke in the arms of agony. He had met _them_ down here, with their jagged, dark weapons and blank, dead, hungry eyes, and had reached for his magic.

There had been an empty well where there was once a steady, comforting stream, and panic and fear surged upwards to join the pain from his fall. He had no physical weapons with him, having lost his daggers in the descent to the dark abyss of space. Gungnir had long since returned to the Allfather's grasp.

They had not appeared hospitable, though he had wanted to leave.

He had tried to speak, channeling what scraps remained of his strength into cajoling, coaxing, persuading, words armor-plated in silver and coated in stardust, pouring in as much energy as he had left to make desperate use at the only aid he could find.

They had not been convinced. Not when the charms had turned to threats, and the threats to pleas, truth and lies and everything in between spun into silver and gold and bronze words forged from worry, self-preservation, and fear that knotted his tongue to choking silences.

His armor had been stripped from him, his clothing torn and studied with no more care than if he were a specimen under a microscope. Hair was pulled, mouth forced open to stare at teeth, every inch of his being examined and assessed, searching for something that he could only fear.

Weakness, he discovered, was not tolerated. Words were useless, falling upon ears that were not deaf, but took them in and tossed them aside as bereft of benefit.

It had been a long time since anyone had fallen into their realm, and they would seize any outsiders that dared to enter, taking them apart as was deemed fit.

Struggling had been no use, he was still too injured, emotionally and physically, to resist the pull of so many. Taken to the center, he had met the only other being upon this barren moonscape, a huge, lurking figure with skin like violet and eyes that lacked pity.

A set of choices was offered, but he had no intention of agreeing. To work for the one who commanded the _things _he had met down here was too hideous to contemplate, and the aura of the creature before him was malignant, oozing a poisonous, filthy air that made his skin crawl and his spirit shrink in on itself in cringing fear, every instinct screaming at him to _runescapegoandhidesomewherefarawayfarawaybeforehetriestokillhim-_

The insanity that perforated the air around him was even more worrying. _Death...he courts Death? He courts a supposed entity, a whisper! There is nothing to speak to, to offer such brutish sacrifice. He makes sweet whispers to a mouldering illusion._

The offerings he had seen had been sickening to witness. Limbs and heads torn off bodies, a dark liquid (blood? acid? he knew not what it was) dripping, spraying, _drenching_. Claws and eyes littered the ground like gemstones from a dragon's hoard. Chitin sloughed off in shreds, pieces of what passed for an exoskeleton shattered and blasted apart into shrapnel fragments to fall like snowflakes. Organs lay in scattered piles, steaming bags and ropes of greyish flesh that smelled like rot and burst when stepped on.

He had vowed not to be added to that uncounted number of carnage, but survival, he found, was much more difficult than anticipated.

Thanos had ordered him broken in, with all refusal and thought of rebellion stamped out accordingly, and the endless mass of skeletal, greyish soldiers were all too eager to comply with the command.

Knives were blunt and sharp and serrated in dizzying alternations, dust and rock shards rubbed into open wounds, into his burning eyes, poured down an aching, bone-dry throat to create an agonizing frenzy of coughing, cuts and bruises bestowed like the kisses of from a lover one starless, black night. Clawed appendages and sharp blades ripped into armor-stripped flesh to cut out ribbons of tissue like wrapping paper. Bones were broken like playing piano keys by a master musician: one alone was not enough to produce a sweet sound, and thus many must be taken by the hand and manipulated in turn for the correct crescendos, diminuendos, the proper melody to offer to a willing audience.

But the audience was a seething, boiling armada of insects massed under a sunless canvas of eternal night, and their jeers and high, ungodly shrieks and demands of _more pain, more pain, bend it, bend it until it breaks_ in a language comprised of harsh, grating, gutter-speak warped the air to a heated bloodbath. The conductor was a master at his art, and left the stage a patch of ground stained with blood and gore again and again in answer for a morbid encore.

Fighting back was only partly satisfying enough to try. One man, even a god, could not compete with what seemed an endless wave of destruction. He struck one down, _they _broke an arm. Breaking the necks of five left him with his hands burned, fingers shattered one by one as nails were torn loose to leave throbbing pinpricks of stinging agony. Kicking and strangling several gifted him with a dislocated jawbone and the loss of several teeth, and pressing it back into alignment was painful enough to leave him shaking, fighting not to black out.

Healing, once a trait that his magic surged through with ease from years of battle-honed necessity, had been slowed down to the barest trickle. Their blades had been coated in _something_, he knew not what, but it burned like acid and stifled his magic to the barest minimum, forcing it down to where he could not properly grasp it. Skin grew back slowly, bone knitted back together even less quickly, and he was unsure of how much blood he had been relieved of, only that it streamed down like melt-water one hour, then soaked battered skin to scarlet the next. Nausea and blackouts become as commonplace as the rattling gasps for air. Screaming made the situation worse, but he did so regardless, trading in cries of pain for poisoned barbs, howling insults and curses as pain rebounded again and again across his body.

Once, when he had been struck hard enough across the jaw, the bone had shattered and left him spitting out mouthfuls of blood and teeth, nearly biting off his tongue from the mind-melting agony. Growing such parts of himself back left his magic but a mere spark deep down, a constant aching pain, bruising his insides mottled shades of sapphire and amethyst, the delicate structures jarred and mangled.

There was no water, no food. Hunger was a constant, brutal force that chewed away at his mangled form, consuming him with an endless need for something, _anything__, _to ingest; his throat was a column of desert masquerading as flesh, gritty and stinging with what seemed eons without the sweet embrace of water. Space rock was unproductive in growing vegetation or grazing grounds for a meat supply, and tasted bitterly of volcanic ashes, raw and unappealing. The sky held no sun for warmth and light, no stars to gleam upon the bleak, barren moonscape, but instead was a screaming maw of ebony, smearing and blurring like an old photograph developed incorrectly.

There was no air. Air gave much-needed oxygen, offered scents, carried sounds and messages on a set of invisible wings borne aloft upon the wind.

What he took in for breath could not be properly called _air. _It was fouled by the stench of gore, of the iron-tinged, copper-tasting reek of blood, of cold stone and dead, burnt skin. It was marred by the stink of filth, by blood, by bile and, perhaps worst of all, of defecation. Inhaling even a mouthful left his lungs burning and his throat raw.

The ground beneath was hard, unyielding, leeching out any meager remnants of warmth, and dotted with pores that left bones broken when he'd had the strength to run. Scattered overhead, rocks and dust floated in clouds of grey, a strange reminder that this was not home.

_What was **home**, anyway? What was safety, comfort, assurance of reciprocated affection, even kindness? If not acceptance, tolerance?_

Home was far, far away, a stretch of distance that could have been a million miles, or even a thousand footsteps, a hundred heartbeats, a handspans' worth of spellwork, a breath's worth of words.

Home was silken hair and a gentle pair of pale, feminine hands on his shoulders, home was blue eyes and a smile bright as Asgard's golden palace, home was the scent of lightning's kiss of ozone, the feeling of books in his hands, the sound of clanking tankards of mead, the chime of his daggers as they sang through the air to meet an enemy's throat.

Home was beyond his reach, a glimmering star seen from the bottom of a deep well. He had no hope of finding it, returning to it.

Did he even belong to it, anymore, if he ever did at all? A trickster, a mischief-maker, a wielder of magic, of finesse, of words and blades, among a kingdom of gold, of brute force, of bluntness and no secrets?

Or rather.._one _secret. He had paid to learn of that one, paid for it in loss, in anguish, in horror, and now, trapped beyond reach of the Gatekeeper's view, in blood, in bone, in breath, in _pain._

**_You will long for something as sweet as pain_...**

How long must he wait, before pain was craved, if only to drive him so deep into the embrace of madness that he would never resurface?

How long before he lost himself?

_You're a fool if you ever had that in the first place, your very existence was built upon a lie, and now it's crumbled around you like the temple you were found in. You're nothing but dust now, dust, dust, dust..._

There was no wind here to blow dust away. Loki wondered idly, through the red haze of semi-consciousness, at the unfairness of it.

_The wind, if it ever would come, might offer a brief reprieve from this heat_.

The burning had been going on for days now, it seemed (or was it months? He could not tell), and the fallen god was a writhing mass of pain, nerve endings alight with throbbing, bleeding sparks of agony as he drifted in and out of mental lucidity.

Their tortures varied far more than their faces; Loki could not differentiate between the horde of clicking, grunting, greyish faces that made up the Chitauri, being far more focused on the instruments of death and agony being used by them to turn his body into a sounding board of white-hot agony.

There was nothing to make fire with in this cold, dead landscape, but by no means was that a deterrent. _They _did not care, so long as it _hurt _enough to bend him into what was wanted. If that meant breaking him over and over again, until he was in the right shape for their means, so be it.

He had been left in a shallow pit; if he had had the strength, he would had tried to pull himself out of it. The pit, he had discovered to his horror, was one of many used to ferment the substance that had been used to burn him. His skin bubbled and smoked as the vile concoction oozed over the pale, bruised expanse, blood trickling forth sluggishly in a futile attempt to clot and scab over.

_Drip._

_Drip._

_Drip._

_Drip._

One part of the hollowed ground dripped the burning liquid, drop by drop, a slow, sizzling pain, overhead. His eyes no longer felt pain.

He could only assume that was what happened, when one no longer had them at their disposal to see with.

As it was, he no longer had the strength even to scream.

He had done so before, until his throat was raw from his cries, his voice reduced to a raspy, paper-thin whisper to beg with, words once as plentiful as the gold that gilded the palace walls now as scarce as fresh air in this inhospitable place. Rage at being left here had been crushed into fear, the horrible worry that _they heard and still left him here_ niggling at the back of his mind, his crumbling, pain-crazed psyche scrambling for answers.

_Perhaps I am being punished with this?_

That had to have been why they did not come, right? He was being punished for his actions with the BiFrost and the Destroyer. He simply had to endure, until he had been satisfactorily chastised, and then they would take him back, back to the warmth and the light.

_Yes, that must be it. When they deem that I have suffered enough, I will be allowed to come home..._

He couldn't bear to think of the other idea. He did not want to listen to the voice that said that they would _never _find him and bring him back.

So he waited. It was all he could do now.

Heimdall did not open the Bifrost in a burst of rainbow light. No search party appeared with weapons drawn and at the ready. His mother was not present, bandages in slender hands and a look of worry in her lovely eyes. Thor did not soar down, lightning crashing down in an unforgiving rain upon his torturers, red cape held out to wrap around his too-thin figure with the words _Let's go home_. Odin did not materialize, Gungnir unleashing a long-restrained power to end the torture of his youngest, a hand held out in silent askance of _Come back to us._

No one had answered, not even when he had shouted until his voice gave out.

Green eyes, dulled with pain and the crushing thought that he would be left here, lay shut in a quiet acquiescence to unconsciousness.

At least while he was not awake, he could dream. Nightmares had been rampant since his arrival, twisted floods of sharp blades and skittering feet to cloud his mind with rumbling echoes of the agony of his waking state, but perhaps, in light of his failing body, he could get one dream.

* * *

_Cold. Sso cold. Dark, dark, dark, sso much darknesss here-_

_Freezing and blank out here, but-_

_Better, sso much better than the lonely sspace-_

_Prisson sso ssmall, **trapped, trapped forever-**_

_No, not there anymore, free now, ssafe now-_

_But cold, very cold, want warmth-_

_Warmth and hosst-_

_Yess, want hosst, hosst **ssafe**-_

Since It's escape, space had not been kind to the symbiote, but not cruel, either. The mass of black, semi-liquid organism floated through the empty reaches of space, twisting and coiling in on Itself. Asteroids, varying planets, and stars loomed in and out of It's path irregularly, compounding the sense of aching loneliness.

The pressing want built up further, becoming a physical ache, a mantra, a need.

_Want hosst, want hosst, want hosst!_

Frigid silence was the only answer, as It continued the slow, painful way forwards, past the slowly tilting celestial marbles of planets and chunky moons.

The ache become worse, bleeding through It's entire being, a ceaseless demand.

_Want hosst, WANT HOSST, WANT HOSST-_

A sudden burst of energy echoed across It's senses from far to the left, a rippling explosion of _Hungerwantneedconsumekillkillkill _that stung like biting flies and made It feel filthy, sickened. Twisting in place, It began attempting to float further away from the source of the vile sensations, when a sudden, sharp burst of _warmsafecontent_ slipped through.

The feeling was intoxicating, and It found a want for more.

Coiling and uncoiling in on Itself, the long, uneasy trip towards the emotional well began.

* * *

Loki knew he was dreaming.

He felt no pain, no discomfort, as he had been forced to endure for so long. There was a gentle, content feeling in the air around him, a cocoon of safety that wrapped around his whole being and suffused him with warmth. He was small again, small enough that he could still sit upon the lap of his mother (_i__f it's a dream, _he thought, _perhaps it's alright to call her that_) and listen to her as she read a story for the night, something done only in their youngest days, the time before growing up on a regime of battle was the norm. Thor was already asleep, leaning against their mother's right side, one hand still clutching a small tankard containing a half-drunk pint of slowly cooling goat's milk.

_"So the Bear had a mind to learn to fish too, and bade the Fox tell him how he was to set about it..."_

He remembered snippets of this scene from his childhood, pieces of the tale floating like a warm drink of cider, and wondered for a moment when his recollections would run out.

He did not want to wake up. Waking up meant returning to the horrible reality he had endured for what seemed to be eons. Waking up meant _pain. _

Shivering, he curled up further, clutching the front of the Queen of Asgard's dress and letting the sound of her voice wash over him like waves over beach sand, steady and reassuring.

_Back and forth, back and forth..._

The gentle, steady heartbeat beneath his ear was very soothing...

_"Oh! it's an easy craft for you," answered the Fox, "and soon learnt. You've only got to go upon the ice, and cut a hole and stick your tail down into it; and so you must go on holding it there as long as you can. You're not to mind if your tail smarts a little; that's when the fish bite..."_

Thor was snoring now, a low, ceaseless droning that grated on the ears. Loki found that a small bit of himself had missed the sound, having heard it for years when they had shared quarters in their early years.

Frigga shifted slightly underneath him, and he felt unease creep up as she took hold of his arms and turned him to face her. Gentle eyes stared down at him, their expression saddened, and Loki felt his heart beat wildly, he suddenly felt so very _small_-

_"Loki, whatever happens, know that your brother and I love you, and miss you." _

He opened his mouth to reply, when the words sunk in. The unease grew stronger.

"Mother," he whispered, fear tinting the word, "What do you mean, you _miss _me?"

A soft smile was the only response, as gentle hands tucked a lock of black hair behind his right ear. Fear bubbled up within him, stealing away the warmth of the arms wrapped so sweetly around his body.

_"Come home, Loki."_

The arms around him vanished, darkness bleeding across his vision, the sound of Thor's snoring cutting off as abruptly as if a candle had been snuffed out.

Loki screamed.

* * *

The Void was a blistering valley of grating noise and stone, a festering cesspool of grimy sound and dark lusts that left It cringing, shuddering in pain.

_Too much, too much, too **loud-**_

_Where iss nice feeling? _

_Where iss hosst?_

Slithering across the cold rock, the symbiote twisted in and out of the pores of the dank ground, struggling to avoid the stomping appendages of the Chitauri and the bursts of raw heat from their weapons, the dank, unclean feeling pouring out of the storm of bodies and that terrible creature with the violet skin.

The army was amassing, a million shades of grey and bone-white and shadow-slicked ebony surging about, preparing for the approaching time of departure. Marching appendages shook the porous ground and left unheard echoes vibrating upwards. The Other had found a suitable realm to offer up as a gift to his absent lady love, the little blue marble a million stars away, with a melting pot of beings whose souls would paint her realm with colours and light enough to deck the afterlife in spiritual songs and silk for a millennium. An invasion, a conquest, a slaughter baptized in the ashes of every life that walked, flew, or swam about on the tiny, backwater world at the other side of the universe.

_Where iss Host? _

_Where? WHERE?_

The unfeeling darkness that hung overhead like an executioner's axe felt claustrophobic, seeming to press inwards until the symbiote wanted to curl up in one of the dark crevices littering the ground and never come out. It hated this place, this place of festering, half-dead dreams that gnawed endlessly at the hive mindset of the drones clamoring for blood. Blood, and souls, and the dreams of the soon-to-be sacrifices to the woman who ruled the dead, the queen of the damned and forgotten.

But It had to try and search. It's host was out there, somewhere among this wasteland of rock and decay, and It would find it, no matter how much It had to scour this filthy nest of death-

An explosion of sudden feeling burned through the Void, a crackling, burning feeling of _fearpainanguishsorrysosorryhelpsomeonehelp _that reeked of old wounds and too many unanswered pleas.

The Chitauri took no notice. The symbiote did.

Swerving in and out across the dips and cracks of the broken moonscape, It hurried toward the source of the emotional blast.

It's host had been found.

* * *

Loki did not know how long he had been trapped here. He only knew that every particle of his body was saturated with agony, all of varying degrees, and that his mouth tasted strongly of copper, and _he still_ _couldn't see_.

Darkness. Darkness, _everywhere. _

_So cold...so very, very cold..._

_Look at yourself, _his mind hissed back at him, _you can't even withstand the cold. Not even a proper monster, are you? Still too weak, even after all these years, to even cling to that._

He wanted to protest, but his tongue was held silent by the ugly truth in the unwanted words, and he found nothing in his depleted mental stores to refute them.

Why else, after all, had he been left abandoned in the snow all those years ago?

Why had he lived so many years, known for doing battle with what the folk of Asgard regarded as a woman's art, a healer's craft, a series of shiny parlour tricks?

Why had Odin said _no_?_  
_

Why had Thor not caught him, when he first fell down here, thrown down from grace and light and _home_?

Why had no one come for him yet?

_Because no one will._

The thought was horrifying, but it was the only logical explanation he could find.

No one would find him, because no one would look for him, if they ever did at all. His actions on Asgard and Midgard would have given the people a perfect excuse to "forget" to look for him. The royal family would be consumed by their duties, too busy to keep a search for someone thought dead.

There would be no funeral pyre, there was no body to burn. Valhalla would be barred from his grasp in death. He would be left to the afterlife, disgraced and forgotten.

The fallen god shuddered in the darkness, feeling the last vestiges of his hope of rescue flicker, sputter, and die.

_You are alone. _

But hadn't he always been?

An unnoticed or unwanted presence, save for when his skill set or his knowledge held some convenient use.

No one ever noticed the shadow. The attention was always focused on the one casting it.

Loki shivered, but it was no longer from the bone-biting cold that had long permeated his blood from the frigid rock around him.

_I'm never leaving here._

The solidity of the statement was awe-inspiring, frightful in its power.

He had once been told that truth offered freedom.

_Was this freedom a welcoming embrace from death? _

There did not seem to be another answer. His body was failing him, innards mangled, skin ravaged, magic all but torn out entirely. No use could be gleaned from him, wasting away as he was.

He was alone, and no one was coming, not even to collect his soon-to-be-corpse for a burial rite.

There was no use in fighting against his captors any longer, save perhaps personal pride, and that had finally faded in the wake of repeated bouts of torture.

Lost among a sea of emotional upheaval, sinking beneath pain and a horrifying new sense of understanding, he let himself drown.

A small consolation, meager as it was, remained: the darkness now could be embraced, offering permanent sanctuary from his captivity and his fall. If no one would take him, perhaps death would be more welcoming.

* * *

It's host was not in good condition, It found in dismay.

The shallow crater the man lay in was full of something that smarted and stung, glistening like slime when It initially tried to cross. Burns carelessly littered the pale skin, along with an artist's painting of violet, royal blue, and smudges of ash grey and volcanic black decorating the remaining flesh.

Fingers, once thin and elegant as a philosopher's, were now left crooked, bent into grotesque shapes like gnarled tree roots, the tips stained with fading red blood from raw cuticles. Hair previously well-groomed and sleek was now matted with dried blood and dust, tangled into a web of knots across too-thin shoulders and falling in a ragged curtain to half-obscure a pale face.

The visage of It's host was thin, gaunt from the long periods without nourishment, cheekbones sunken, brow furrowed as if from a nightmare. The eyes appeared shadowed, ringed with faded lavender-blue blooms of bruises. Thin lips mouthed half-formed words that sank through the air like falling dreams, left unintelligible save for the occasional grunt of pain.

Breath came in slow, painfully short rasps, a low, rattling sound that hurt to hear.

It slithered forward carefully, slowly, advancing bit by bit and spreading across the rim of the crater to avoid the stinging solution.

_What to do?_

The crater was still half-full of the burning liquid, to touch it would doubtlessly bring pain.

But It's host was in trouble. It _had _to do something, or the host would die.

It surveyed the languishing creature before It, noting the injuries one by one and taking care to remember each of them.

The _things _with the sharp, pointed weapons and the eyes like the dead had done this to It's host, marring the elegant structure into painful contortions and leaving a broken, shivering being left to wallow in filth until _they _came back to begin anew, until _they _were satisfied.

It would not let that happen.

_Kill them, kill them all now, rip their flessh from boness, tear out their eyess, carve out inssides and bleed them dry-_

_KILL THEM END THEM DESSTROY THEM-_

_THEY HURT HOSST THEY HURT HOSST THEY HURT HOSST-_

_THEY MUSST DIE-_

Shivering, the symbiote's rage percolated in a vicious brew of hatred, bubbling up inside like hot tar over asphalt.

They would _pay_, all of them, for every last cut and bruise and burn and broken bone done to It's host.

But first...first the host must be saved. Slaughtering the filth that had done this could wait. _  
_

_Ssafe, keep ssafe, help, fix-_

It had witnessed little while trapped within the containment capsule that had been meant as It's prison, and eventual tomb. But the years trapped within the cramped space had nonetheless bourne witness to countless injured combatants heading to and fro from healing-tanks while on Battleworld. Words had been picked up, memorized subconsciously, from the numerous beings, whether villain or superhero, that had wandered the halls in search of food, supplies, healing, or company, until bits and pieces formed a patchwork set of skills that could potentially be used to aid in a host's recovery from injuries or illnesses. The thought of someday being able to put such knowledge to use had been the only thing of comfort.

Now, It's host was here, real and alive, albeit barely, and It would finally be able to put the secret store of knowledge to use.

Slowly, It oozed out into smaller streams, forming a thin web of netting to be suspended over the shallow pit in the rock. It had to be careful; the makeshift structure had been rendered thin as gossamer to stretch over, and if It fell into the hot burning oily substance...

Once stretched taut over the small dank crevice, It began the painfully slow, calculated descent down the center.

If It could get directly above the host, successfully land, and then spread out and encompass the entire body, the merging process would be fulfilled, and It's host would be protected from the burning, the stinging, the awful pains caused by this godforsaken rock.

_Careful, musst be careful, sso careful-_

_Ssafe ssoon, promisse, ssafe ssoon-_

The first contact was tentative, tinged with worry that the body below might be hurt further by the additional weight.

It felt It's senses become overwhelmed by the shock of the first sensation of contact: the mercifully clean feeling of _quiet, safe, cool _that seemed like a tiny oasis among the burning, searing, filthy feeling emanating from the other beings encountered in this dark pit of a realm.

_Sslow, musst be sslow, or hosst will panic-_

In truth, the body beneath It seemed very unlikely to be in any fit state to work into anything resembling panic. It decided to be careful regardless.

Slowly, the mass of semi-liquid organism flowed over the battered torso, the touch featherlight as It carefully moved over bruised, burnt flesh, soothing old injuries and glossing over gashes.

_Ssafe now. Promisse..._

* * *

Loki opened his eyes a crack, a sense of surprise washing over him at the ability to see again.

_I must be dead. _

He was certain he would not otherwise feel so oddly free of so many of the numerous pains he had grudgingly become accustomed to.

Blinking, he looked at his body, drinking in the sight of the black, dully shimmering mass languidly streaming across his body, a faintly shining slick of oil with a sheen the moon-pale glow of raw white diamond.

The sight did not alarm him; it was only logical to assume that, in death, he was no longer as alone as he was in life. The dead had always outnumbered the living.

_Perhaps I will be consumed by this strange creature, my body reduced to a feeding ground. _

The thought was not as nearly as alarming as he thought it was supposed to be. _At least there will be some use for me, then. _

Lying back, he let his head rest against the hard rock beneath him, hair brushing against his gaunt face like nettle clusters, dust powdering his cheeks from marble to grey. Overhead, the black smudge of sky rippled and twisted like oil frying against metal, warping into new nebulas as tiny bubbles of dark ink.

He could no longer feel any part of himself beyond a faint tingling, but the pain was going away, so he decided to leave such thoughts be.

The oil slick moved slowly, he noticed, as if being careful not to jar any injuries. He wondered at such consideration.

_At least there is no pain brought with it's movement._

The god flexed his fingers and toes, silently relishing the lack of pain, and watched as black liquid slowly covered each digit, gently encasing each pale appendage in what could only be described as a lukewarm balm, cocooning damaged tissue in a soft, fluid-like layer that cushioned him from the biting cold of the Void and the stinging heat of the pit.

The slice of shadow moved upwards again, having completed the job of wrapping around the lower half of his body, and proceeded to bind his torso and then flow past his arms, cradling flesh like a well-worn summer blanket, and then slowly, delicately, creeping upwards about the column of his neck.

He did not resist as the dark semi-fluid washed over him, moving gently up his throat; swallowing instinctively in some lingering remnants of what could, in life, pass for worry, he felt a faint tickling sensation in response as it slid past his neck and finally began consuming his head.

Taking in a deep breath, he closed his eyes and waited in calm acceptance as the strange mass flowed over his skull, sliding smoothly over hair and wrapping around each strand as the lukewarm tingling sensation delicately curled around and over the shell of each ear.

As it slid over his face, he inwardly marveled at the fact that, even as he was absorbed by this odd creature, there was no pain, no fear, no worry at the fact that he had experienced what those in Asgard would look upon with contempt as no true warrior's death.

There was only peace, and acceptance, and safety.

He exhaled, and let go. The darkness surged down his throat, numbing, soft, achingly careful.

* * *

The symbiote felt exhilaration flood every particle of matter It possessed as the host relaxed, pliant and willing in It's hold.

The bonding sessions It had seen at the hands of It's species were often horrifying, a blunt, savage union that robbed the hosts of energy and left them gasping for breath and contorting in agony as their adrenaline-fueled sprees of action left them dying all too fast and their symbiotes endlessly searching for fresh meat to adhere to. Draining the hosts dry was all too common a practice, leaving an ugly mental remembrance of gruesome parasitism.

This..to It's knowledge, was an entirely new response. The host was calm, accepting It with ease and even apparent relief. There was no struggling, no screaming, only placid acquiescence.

_Ssafe_, It crooned in satisfaction, _hosst ssafe now. _

Fitting Itself carefully around the thin body, It spread out and tucked Itself around the host's frame, sealing any gaps between skin and the dark recesses of the Void, blocking out sound and cold. Tendrils thickened, widening into a solid, dark mass. The internal transformation continued, sinking into skin, saturating organs, coating and repairing damaged tissues and bones with meticulous care, rewriting cell structures for strengthened regeneration and durability. The meager amount of untainted air that had been inhaled into the lungs was purified and recycled continuously, maintaining a steady, slow rhythm to allow the damaged respiratory system a period of healing during sleep.

Nutritional intake needs plummeted as It fused to the spinal cord, wrapping securely around mending vertebrae and sending out restorative energy for replenishment in place of long-denied food and drink. Reaching upwards, It hummed in amazement as neurons fired off rapidly in response, the mental link blossoming and stabilizing as the two minds mingled.

Nourishment, whether mental or physical, was so scarce as to seem entirely depleted on this barren rock, but It would not let It's host perish for the sickening lack of such necessities.

The cocoon complete and the transformation well underway, It settled in for the long wait.

* * *

Safely tucked behind the protective, living barrier, Loki slept, and dreamed, the symbiote alongside him.

Thoughts whirled and twisted into new, exotic shapes, no longer confined by the centuries-old mindset of Asgardian upbringing, as the more primal, instinct-driven mental concepts of the symbiote fused and grew into more complex forms, aided by years of books and hunting and lengthy political discussions.

_What are you-_

_What is this, what did you do-_

_Hosst ssafe now, ssafe from cold, dead sspace-_

_Why? Why save me? I'm broken, I'm useless, left to die-_

_No! Hosst important, sspecial-_

_I'm not special, I'm a monster-_

_What...iss...monsster?_

_I am-_

_No! You are hosst, hosst!_

_Host? Are you a parasite? Am I to be food?_

_Hosst, you are hosst. _

That was the end of it. The symbiote would not accept any other label or identification for It's vessel, and the mad god could not dissuade It and convince It that he was anything other than that one, simple, all-consuming, life-defining word.

For the symbiote, the host meant safety, survival, companionship. The word _host_ meant _everything_, an entire universe of meanings revolving steadily on an axis around the four important letters.

For Loki, the symbiote meant company, and, in the darkness of the makeshift organic chrysalis, understanding, and comfort. Everything he had lacked in a sufficient quantity had been found, here on this pathetic little gash in space, in the arms of his own demise. Underneath what had once been ill-fitting skin was a being who shared memories, thoughts, feelings, the same heartbeat, a sense of newly made familiarity so warm, so welcoming, that it _ached_.

Memories began to bleed and run together with dreams, times of hunting trips and feasting halls and evenings by the fireside practicing spells blending in with half-formed images of dark, shadowy figures, a sickening feeling of claustrophobia in a tiny container, the freezing expanse of deep space, an all-consuming need to find a vessel.

Breathing slowed in sleep, becoming deeper, more relaxed, until it synchronized into a slow, continuous, single dance of inhalation, exhalation.

Loki breathed in, heating the interior for a brief moment.

The symbiote breathed out, and the chrysalis seeped out air, wreathing the denser air around it into a bubble of fog, the cocoon a tinted foil-glass with a single, dark outline within, cradled in a layer of permeable shadow.

* * *

The chrysalis grew stronger, a thick, uneven mass of solid black that loomed out of the shallow crater like a nest of briers, the surface jagged and rough as torn sandpaper in a silent warning not to approach or touch.

The air grew dense around it, a slowly solidifying shield to keep out the noxious fumes and endless, unnerving chattering of the beasts that made up the bulk of the invasion force.

* * *

Thanos sent out an order to the seething mass of greyish soldiers.

"Find him. I will break him one final time, and the invasion shall commence. My lady must _not_ be kept waiting..."

The Chitauri scurried across the barren moonscape, surging forwards like a plague of locusts.

Halfway across the bleak world, the chrysalis began to split.

* * *

The Mad Titan stared at the enormous structure, blue eyes analyzing the hulking cocoon of black, jagged material gleaming dully as an oil spill in the dim light of the Chitauris' weapons. The army shifted and chattered nervously, the looming mass's presence exuding an unsettling feeling as they regarded the single, hazy figure within.

A low growl escaped him as the soldiers remained hesitant to approach. "Break it open, our...visitor's...presence is required."

The chrysalis was approached slowly, weapons drawn and at the ready to rip into the contents at the slightest hostile movement.

The butt of a gun pressed up against the exterior of the dark surface, the sound echoing across the otherwise forcibly silent moonscape.

Several feet deep inside, movement fluttered.

* * *

The inhabitant within the protective case of the chrysalis shifted, stretching long, coltish limbs from an instinctive curled up position, fingers and toes flexing and rubbing together, testing limits, examining new thin, sharp claw tips in place of nails. Muscles were flexed, rippling like water under the skin-tight layer of semi-fluid organism, lean strips of flesh bunching and relaxing.

Eyes flickered open, blinking languidly in the dim interior as pupils dilated for better vision; a pale tongue darted out, wetting thin lips as a breath was taken in.

Letting out a groan, the figure twisted in place, unlocking knots and stiffened vertebrae as bones popped back into position.

_They are outside. We need to act. _

The once-god did not question if the symbiote could hear the unspoken thoughts. The bond had been established, the link anchored securely into both minds, connecting into an interlocking weave of mental processing as smooth as the untouched surface of a frozen winter lake.

Loki no longer existed as an independent entity. Every atom of matter and spark of magic had been infused with the secure, clinging embrace of the symbiote, becoming a hybrid of roiling shadow and intergalactic essence, cold and pure as fallen snow, deadly as a drink of hemlock.

The concept of _I _no longer existed, because the concept would require solitude, and he was no longer alone.

He would never be alone again. _They _would never be alone again. Blood and breath and bone and magic were bound together in liquid shadow and gnawing hunger, a union of morbid compliments and a promise of companionship until their shared vessel rotted into nothing more than dust and half-remembered legend.

His other half answered eagerly, conjuring images of broken, bleeding Chitauri corpses to flood the mental link with gloriously gruesome scenes of vengeance.

_They will bleed, bleed dry into dusst, dusst! Crussh their boness, devour them! _

Had he still been a single entity, untouched by his time in the Void and with his body's fellow passenger, Loki might have felt a twinge of apprehension at the violent thoughts, based on instinct and lacking a proper plan...although the reason behind such blood lust was nonetheless appreciated.

But the time of being a single life form had passed, and considering the circumstances that brought about their combined state, his companion's ideas sounded as if they had a good deal of merit.

However, it did not do any harm to have a backup plan. Running in with weapons raised and a battle cry upon one's lips did not always end with all of your opponents dead and cooling at your feet; the victor was not always the one with the greater strength, but the intelligence and standing to ensure success. The trip to Jotunhiem, in what seemed to be a lifetime ago, had proved that clearly.

_We will end them...but in time. We must be careful, tear them down from within. Let them believe they broke us. We will devour them from the inside, steal the breath from their lungs, stifle them into defeat._

The symbiote shifted in place, rippling, resettling over flesh and pressing in closer, flattening Itself against the lithe body to reassert It's preferred, all-encompassing position.

_We will gift Thanos with his mountains of corpses...he never did say **whose **corpses he wanted for his love. _

_Dead? Filthy, rotting creaturess gone? All of them?_

Achingly strong agreement bled into the shared link, the concept of so many tormentors left as bloodied husks of bone and flesh a glittering prize. _A_s_ many as we like. _

The dark glee echoing across the telepathic link was so similar, Loki was not certain if it came first from himself, or from his companion. Perhaps it was done simultaneously.

_Let them come knocking, they will fall. They will sscream, and beg for ssweet pain. _

The thoughts bubbled up from both mental wells, reassuring and solid.

The sound of a weapon banging against the outside of their refuge echoed, reverberating within the cozy space. The interior began dissolving, globs of the symbiote reaching out to wrap further around It's host and mold to the lean form, re-amassing in anticipation of future combat.

A cold smirk blossomed into place as both minds poured back and forth across the mental link, opening further and mixing into a combined consciousness. _Ah, the guesstss have arrived. Time to greet them. _

* * *

The collected congregation surrounding the ebony mound stared at the place where the gun had struck, weapons drawn, with the Mad Titan standing to the side, face an expressionless mask.

He approached the breakage in the chrysalis, clutching the handle of a long, thin scepter in one huge hand, the top glowing with an unnatural bright blue light.

The puppet-king needed to look the part, if the invasion was to continue.

The impact point burst open with a splattering of black sludge-like material, a single thin hand thrusting outwards, fingers curling, extending sharp, curved ends. The appendage was entirely coated in black.

Thanos recoiled slightly, eyes widening as the hand retreated back into the chrysalis, silence filling the air for a moment. Several of the nearest Chitauri were commanded to open up the chrysalis, and, if necessary, pull out the owner of said hand by force.

Pulling apart the edges of the sizable tear in the protective shell, they moved aside accordingly, parting to allow their leader to press the top of the scepter into the entryway. Contact with the Mind Gem would ensure compliance.

The scepter stopped abruptly, held fast in an unmoving, iron grip. Thanos stared in veiled confusion, resolutely pressing the scepter forward again, only to encounter the same result.

The scepter's body broke in two with a sharp, echoing _crack_, blackness flooding over the golden length like an oil spill across water; Thanos released his grip on the weapon, stepping back and regarding the change with mounting rage and uncertainty.

"What trickery is this?," he hissed coldly. "You putrid worm, show yourself, you worthless mass of slag!"

A low chuckle issued from within the chrysalis. "Well, if you _inssisst._"

The weapon was pulled fully into the small cavity with a sharp tug, the chrysalis splitting apart like rotting fruit in boiling heat. Chitauri aimed blades and guns at the skinny figure that knelt in the wreckage of the shredded remnants, clad in what appeared to be a form-fitting catsuit sewn as if from night itself, the surface rippling dangerously, forming ridges and spikes and barbs when the soldiers came near. A crooked smirk danced across the thin slice of mouth, eyes glittering with madness, ringed with dark circles, and full of nothing the Titan could understand. Black hair, the ends jagged and curled like a raven's claws, tumbled down to a pair of narrow shoulders in a wild tangle, looking slick as an oil spill and shading one half of the pale face like a torn curtain.

The scepter was clutched in one hand, elongated, covered in that strange black ooze like a coating of varnish, the metal form warped into taller, crooked proportions from where the breakage point mended together. The Mind Gem pulsed steadily at the top like a universal heartbeat, seated in a throne of thin ebony branches, glowing brightly as a stolen star.

"Stand at attention," growled the Titan, eyeing the kneeling form warily. "Your skills are needed."

"Oh, they _are_, hmm?", came the mocking reply, teeth bared in a wolf's grin. "What do you want from uss, then, that we are to be ussed?"

Thanos regarded the being before him, noting the odd form of address. "The invasion is about to commence, you are to lead the main forces into combat. The realm of Midgard has something I want, an artifact of great power known as the Tesseract. Bring it to me."

Sharp eyes stared back, gleaming with a strange black tint at the edges in the light of the drawn arsenal surrounding the area. "And if we don't _want_ to do thiss for you?"

An agonizing power flared out from the Titan, eyes narrowing in rage at the reply. "You _dare_ question your orders? I, who put the scepter in your hands, who offered you a place at the head of this glorious crusade for the Lady Death?"

A hoarse laugh, sounding more like gurgling water from long disuse, bubbled up. "We are to be king, then? The realm is ourss, if we give you your dead?"

The answering nod was the only reply. Wordlessly, Thanos pointed towards the horizon, where a seething body of greyish-white waited impatiently, the sky hung with great armored beasts, swollen with ranks of soldiers and writhing in the air like a series of heat mirages.

"Take your position. If you succeed, Midgard is yours, I have no use for it once the souls have been harvested. If you should fail..."

Trailing off into dangerous waters, he looked at the wide, sharp eyes, satisfying himself of the telltale unnatural blue tint. The unspoken threat of _death will be too kind to take you in, pain too sweet for your filthy hide, you will be found and you will_ _pay_ hung in the air between them, an ugly promise.

Loki clutched the weapon in a white-knuckled grip, settling into place at the head of the invasion forces. The portal opened up before him, a huge, circular rip into the wavering reality of the Void. The air hummed with tension, movement buzzing like flies crawling over the dead. His tongue felt leaden, a heavy weight in his mouth with all the lies he knew he would soon need to speak, and he swallowed, feeling his shared body, taut as a violin's set of strings, quiver with energy.

Gratitude for his link to his companion welled up, holding fast to the security offered by the shared mental processes; It didn't have any intention of _sharing _It's host, be it with the Mind Gem, or with anything or anyone else. The scepter had thus been seized and assimilated by the symbiote immediately upon the entry into the chrysalis, a bit of magic was done to assure the Mad Titan that the sceptor still "worked", and all had gone as planned. Both minds glowed with the dark satisfaction that they could not be controlled by the Mind Gem's influence, no matter how She whispered, and the feeling was a cloak of warmth as, together, they began moving.

A world a million stars away glittered like a jeweler's collection from within the frame of the portal: inside, people could be seen, rushing about like ants, trading papers, typing away at computers, babbling hurried directions, all the while studying a strange-looking bright blue cube in the center of a large room. Thick coils of wire and cables snaked about the floor like ribbons of silk in an old sewing basket.

He stepped through the portal, scepter in hand, his companion nestled securely within his mind and cradling him from the cold vacuum of the portal link through space and time. Voices could be heard from the other side, dim and unsteady, as if from an out-of-tune radio, but becoming more and more audible by the second.

Only a few were of any real value, but they held just enough importance to merit attention.

_Tesseract. _A prize? Thanos had demanded it, perhaps it was another gift for Death? Or, quite possibly, a power source, if the sensation of energy building up on the other side was any indication...

_Project Avengers. _The opposing side? A potential defense force against the filth he had to bring to them?

_Wormhole generator. _One outcome of many?

_Space travel. _A way home? A way _anywhere_?

A mere handful of syllables became the die cast in a new and dangerous game.

_Time to put on a sshow,_ he thought in grim satisfaction, his companion's voice echoing the words in ready agreement. _They wanted death, let uss give them what they assked for. _

If it was not the death Thanos had intended, who was he to take the blame? If the army perished, it was the army's fault for being incompetent against the very backwater planet they wanted to consume. If the ants decided to devour the anteater, it was nature rising up in revolt against being crushed into submission. He would not accept blame for it. He did what he wanted, and obeyed none.

But in the meantime...

_If it'ss trickss they want, let'ss give them their duess._

A low gurgle of laughter reverberated across the link, a babbling brook of lilting cadence. _Yess, together. _

_Together,_ he agreed.


	2. A Skewed Destiny

**A/N: Originally I had intended this story to be a simple oneshot, albeit a somewhat long one. However, thanks to some nice reviews and feedback, I've decided to make this twisted little tale a bit longer. So now, please enjoy part two of what has now been deemed a sevenshot! Why seven? First, according to the _Harry Potter _series, 7 is the most powerful magical number, and our delightfully twisted protagonist (symbiote and all) is a magic-wielder; second, in Mr. Neil Gaiman's _Sandman _series, there are 7 Endless, each representing a different state of being, and all of which are demonstrated here (albeit completely out of their original order)****.**

**NOTE: Given that this _is_ an AU, please note that _not_ everything will play out like it did in the original _Thor _films and _The Avengers_; given that our already somewhat-mad God of Mischief is bonded to a dangerous sentient alien symbiotic organism with a penchant for eating people, S.H.I.E.L.D. is going to have a tougher time than the original scenario. Just remember...Loki isn't happy with his captors' actions, and he's also a lot more than just a bit crazy here. If he can pull off what _looks _like an invasion while simultaneously getting as many Chitauri squashed like bugs as possible, things can still go along with the basic plotline without flying too far off the map. Getting a kingdom out of this _would_ be a nice ego boost, but having his psyche scrambled like a skillet of eggs has rearranged his priorities to something a little less "subjugate the puny ants and show that I'm supposed to be king of something" and a lot more "crush my tormentors into bloody splinters first, and if that means pretending to be an emotionally unstable power-hungry lunatic to get the locals to rise up and go full-blown fight-for-the-survival-of-the-human-race while letting me strut my stuff and possibly get in a few moments of _fun_, so be it. I can figure out the rest later." Loki _is_ a manipulator, after all, so the idea of him purposely rigging the playing field full of obstacles for his own personal benefit seems legitimate to me. A****lso, there will be occasional P.O.V. changes to indicate certain events as seen from different perspectives, so expect a bit of a surreal, jarring experience.**

**NOTE #2: _Eitr _is an Old Norse word for "poison". Given our protagonist(s), I thought it fitting. **

**DISCLAIMER: I own none of the _Marvel _universe(s)'s quotes, characters, etc. used here, no matter how paraphrased (or not). **

**WARNING: Swear words present. Intense action, semi-graphic depictions of violence. Instances of dark, potentially-viewed-as-morbid/awkward humor (given the fact that some (of the many, many different universes' versions of Venom) did mention him having "the munchies" for human flesh (skin, organs (the brain in particular), etc.), you may find yourself with a mental image of a somewhat more charismatic, unhinged alien-god version of Hannibal Lector...if he came from an outer space viking version of the Addams Family). More Loki-whump. **

* * *

The air here was cleaner, he noticed, and the discovery of it sparked a ghost of the mischievous smirk he had thought he might never have a chance to wear again. The amiable hum of affirmation from the back of his mind coated the clean, refreshing feeling of the thought with a tint of primal fascination.

Considering that they had just left a filthy rock at the scummy outskirts of the universe, clean air was indeed worthy of a moment of contemplation and intake.

_Sstudy ssmellss later? _

_Yess, we'll take a look later. _

The explosion of blue colour and sound died down to a dull roar in the background of the room, flames racing up the walls and vanishing like the light of a nest of will-o'-the-wisps. Stepping out of the portal, he and his companion collectively braced for impact, landing in a crouching position on the newly made crater in the floor with a _bang. _Shaking his head, Loki knelt on the hard surface, listening intently to the bursts of noise reverberating around him as the humans realized that the portal had spit out new life. The symbiote shifted restlessly, curling tightly around bones and rippling across the surface of It's host's skin with thousands of pinhead-thin needles in a flaring show of universal warning.

Taking in a deep lungful of air, he gripped the scepter tight in one hand, crushing the urge to fling it away as if it had been set ablaze. The filthy thing was an extension of his tether to _them_, a leash with which to bind him to Thanos and his delusions. The only reason it wasn't thrown from him was that his companion had made it bearable, assimilating the Mind Gem and crushing the needle-sharp croons of the harsh neon blue light into pieces. The whispering croaks of the cursed stone still _hurt_, gnawing constantly at his shared mind like a festering wound, but the symbiote had ensured that nothing further could really be done, at least for the moment.

It did not have any intention of letting anyone else within the fragile cocoon of mental space. The only downside was that, so far, actually _eating _the Mind Gem did not seem to work as a disposal method. Judging by the low growling sounds and brooding emotion at It's side of the mental link, the symbiote was vowing to try to consume the glowing blue rock again later. The thought was somewhat amusing.

Pulling his thoughts into a more current direction, the mad god straightened slightly, registering a series of syllables filtering through. Blinking languidly, he looked up at find the humans had amassed into defensive positions, guns at the ready as a tall man in a leather eye patch and a black trench coat approached, his single visible eye scanning the scene with a distinctly wary, unpleasant expression. The man next to him (_a ssoldier of ssome kind_, he thought) looked calmer, but, judging by the wary stance, might pose a threat if he reached for weapons.

"Sir, please put down the spear!"

Guns were being loaded as the man spoke, people moving as if by his unspoken command, or some emergency protocol procedure. _Hmm...The leader here, then._

Loki stared at the scepter in his hand for a moment, contemplating what to do. After a few seconds of pondering, he quietly sighed in resignation, knowing that he was, if not outmatched in brute force, outnumbered. Turning inward, he spoke up.

W_hat sshould we do? _he asked.

The symbiote flickered within their shared mindscape, a rippling wavelength of wild intent surging with suggestions that bloomed from colours and feelings. The faint undercurrent of blue, the colour of a deep, royal shade so much unlike the eye-searing neon of the Tesseract, bolstered a needed sense of calm, while the whirling background mass of grey reassured him of support, the blossoms of orange radiating envigourating energy.

The colours, the emotional tints leaking from each, slowly congealed into discernible words rasped in that now-familiar low, husky lisp of a voice that reminded Loki of the ancient, dusty rustle of the well-worn book pages he had turned, ever thirsting for knowledge, in a time of youth from what seemed centuries ago. The sound was comforting, warm as summer sunlight and soft as the Allmother's smile, like the precious few embraces he knew from early days that did not have some alternative purpose behind them, but were instead given out as a gesture of unspoiled affection.

_They will try to hurt uss. Fire firsst, they will sscatter._

He turned the thought over in contemplation, thinking back on the tactics he had been taught by countless tutors and his not-father's advisers in childhood. _If we kill them, no one will know that the army approachess. We need ssome alive, to ssound the alarm, and usse for information on thiss realm. _

The entire exchange took only a moment, but it was all the time that was needed for Loki to agree to the idea. The observing humans barely had time to blink between Loki's thoughtful look at the scepter before he raised it high and fired, a blue bolt of heat blasting forth in a thick, jagged arc of light and sound.

The humans screamed, bolting like rabbits and regrouping in the corners as the surge of power exploded across the airways. Loki threw himself forward into the fray, wondering idly if the first of the army's spaceships had arrived and crashed into anything yet.

* * *

Somewhat unfortunately for the plan favouring keeping some of the humans alive, the resident dominant species seemed dismally prone to succumbing to mortal wounds like Volstagg's willpower crumbled while near food. Willfully turning a blind eye to some of the lower level workers as they ran out seemed the most viable option.

_They drop like fliess_, complained the symbiote, a faint undercurrent of petulance lacing the words with a bitter tang like under ripe pears. _Musst be more careful, or they all die. _

_Like it'ss our fault they aren't built like uss. _

When the dust finally cleared and the sparks had stopped flying, there were agents dead on the floor, the majority either from slit throats, close range energy blasts from the scepter, or impalement through the chest or neck, and the floor was now glossed over with a sickly fresh polish of new, slowly widening pools of dark blood.

Several agents had tried to shoot at him earlier, guns firing off bullets into a cyclone of white-hot shells.

Though the bullets had proved little more of an annoyance than stinging insect bites, given the rather poor aim fueled by rage and desperation to cloud proper targeting, the symbiote hadn't taken kindly to the attack on It's host, lashing out tendrils of spikes and twisted barbs in a frenzied whirlpool of coal-black edges like rotating saw blades, and by the time the smoke had cleared, one man had been thrown clear across the room to slam into a control panel, the other two had hit the floor and a nearby pillar. None got up. The remaining lab grunts had since fled, screaming for help.

Loki straightened up, eyes surveying the destroyed laboratory, listening to the sparks go off in the far corner from a shattered control panel. Coils of cables and wire were tangled in heaps all around from the fray, like handfuls of entrails spilled from the slit open belly of some great mechanical beast. Off to the side, he could hear someone groaning.

_Aah, not all dead, then.  
_

Turning, he walked over to the shuddering form lying on his side on the floor, watching as the stocky man hauled himself into a crouching position and began pulling out a pistol.

Briefly, he entertained the idea of letting the human go to call for backup. The resulting scenario would be interesting, to say the least. But time was of the essence if the inhabitants of this realm were to be able to mount a working attack against what he'd unhappily brought them. Letting the word spread this way would only leave them scrambling in a mad panic until it was too late to crush the invading army due to sheer numbers.

If things were to go as he wanted, getting a hostage seemed the quicker way to go. Judging by the conversation with the man with the eye patch, this mortal held some sort of important position in whatever organization had built the entry portal, and they'd likely want him back before his time on Midgard was up.

_Take ssomething from them, they'll want to take ssomething_ _back_, he mused. _If we keep him alive, they'll want him returned. An aid for uss, and an added incentive for them to sstrike againsst the invading force._

The idea was too tempting to ignore.

A faint nudging from within had Loki blink in surprise, the words sinking in to register with what he _knew _was a faint aura of hope.

_If thiss doessn't work, can we eat him?_

..._No._

Altered state of self or not, Loki could not help but have some serious doubts that consumption of the local dominant species would be considered any more socially acceptable than bringing in an alien armada.

He may be a bit more unstable than he once was, but he still had standards.

The desire for food _was_ a pressing issue, however. Being denied nutrients for so long in the Void had left a constant feeling of hunger and thirst, a painful, nagging sensation that had not ceased with the arrival through the portal. Getting something to eat would relieve some of the pressure on his slowly-healing magical reserves, while simultaneously offering the opportunity to scout out the realm and its inhabitants for any potential obstacles for either side.

Pressing a hand to his abdomen, the mad god winced slightly as he felt each piece of the mended rib-cage protrude from beneath reinforced symbiote-fused skin. Despite his companion's best efforts to heal their shared vessel, the damage that could be repaired had been limited by a lack of helpful resources to aid in a complete recovery. Given that there was nothing to eat, drink, or use for spare blood in the Void, it seemed that only time and a few good meals might rectify that gap.

But food could wait for a while longer. It had been such a long time already, what was a little more time?

He still had a minion to convert, and an invasion to orchestrate for it's own insidious demise.

Readjusting his grip on the scepter, he walked forwards, regarding the man before him with an assessing look.

_Sstrong build, determined, loyal...yet a sspark of independent thought, how interessting...  
_

It seemed that this potential minion might bear a grudge for the mental subjugation before this all was over. The thought was worth looking into later, if it would incite the humans to further lash out.

Holding out the scepter, he leaned forwards and pressed the tip to the lean chest just as the man's fingers pressed against the trigger.

_BANG. _

An explosion of sound cracked through the air like glass breaking. Loki had stepped out of the way, but not quite out of the firing range. A dull, burning pain seared across his left side, and a howl of pain burst across the mindscape as the symbiote felt the close-range powder burn take effect. Horror and fascination rose up as Loki felt his companion's pain echo his own in a stinging reverberation.

Shuddering at the feeling of shared agony, he pressed a hand to the injury site, scrounging up a bit of magic to seal off the patch of burnt flesh, repair torn blood vessels and muscle, and begin knitting new skin together. A low hiss of pain rose up, though whether it came from himself or from the symbiote, he could not discern.

Several thin strands of ebony semi-fluid wrapped around the burn site, forming a mesh net and curling around thin fingers in an unspoken gesture of empathy. Taking a moment to drink in such freely offered comfort, he closed his eyes, waiting for the the Mind Gem's effects to take root in the human. Whispers of thought bubbled up from the man, traveling through the scepter like ghostly echos of the bullets and arrows fired from nimble fingers, a mane of fire-bright hair red as blood and poppies to wreath a pale face and hands dainty and deadly as belladonna (_Natassha Romanov_, and he found the name was softer, a former lover, perhaps?), the man with the eyepatch holding out a folder (Director _Nicholass Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D.,_ he noted, and this one's name had authority ringing from it, and thus was definitely the leader here) next to a slightly balding figure beside him in a plain black suit and tie (_Phil Coulsson_, and the name seemed to be tinged with affection as well, so he's worth investigating later), and then a name finally flickered into existence like a candle being lit in darkness: _Agent_ _Clint Barton, code name: Hawkeye. _

Within seconds of contact with the scepter, the gun was back in its holster at the agent's side as the unnatural shade of neon blue washed slowly up sharp eyes. A series of quick blinks, and then only bright blue remained, the converted gaze now staring at the inflicted injury with a slight hint of worry.

"I'm guessing I shouldn't have done that?"

Taking in the expression on the other man's face, Loki could think of several things that would be terribly satisfying to respond with in this moment. Unfortunately, he could not use any of them if he wanted to keep the human alive...at least, not without enacting bodily harm.

_**Now** can we eat him?_

_...Again, no. _

The idea _did _have a bit more appeal, now, though. Tucking the thought away, he lowered the scepter and spoke up.

"You have heart," he remarked calmly. "Come, we have work to do."

A sharp nod was answer enough. Turning, he began scanning the room for any signs of additional life, and a flicker of movement from the far side drew his attention: the man he now knew was called Fury had pulled the large blue glowing cube free from the portal generator and was in the midst of putting it into a dark briefcase. There was another man nearby, wearing a suit and a somewhat vacantly worried expression.

A quick tap with the scepter, and the man in the suit was assimilated. Now, on to the bigger picture: getting the cosmic cube.

Failure was _not_ an option here.

"Pleasse don't," he spoke up, "We sstill _need _that."

The single visible eye stared at him in both rage and annoyance, pressing the cube into place as he spoke. "This doesn't have to get any messier." The words are tinged with a warning bite, sharp with the confidence that only comes from the urge to strike, should hostilities escalate.

"Of coursse it doess. We've come too far for anything elsse," and the words rolled off the tongue like glass beads falling from a silken handkerchief, simple and almost disgustingly blunt in their strange state of truth. The man gave him an incredulous look, the cube still glowing brightly within its confines like some strange blue firefly, and Loki forced back, with some difficulty, the sudden burning urge to slam the sharp end of the scepter into the cube to try and break it into a thousand fractured pieces on the spot.

The look on the human's face changed slightly, shifting to add _Who the hell are you? _or perhaps _**What** __the hell are_ _you?,_ and Loki would have taken offense to the rude demand for answers in that expression, but the Allmother had drilled enough manners in him during childhood for him to feel compelled to answer.

But it had been a long, long time, since he had last been asked his name. The symbiote did not count, as It did not _ask _so much as _understand _upon their joining; words had been a sweet dainty, but they were not _needed_ when the two of them had fused down the last molecule and become one and the same. It knew all of him, and he knew all of It, and thus the need for separate terms of address had never arisen.

Taking a moment to contemplate, he took in a breath, about to speak, but the four letters he had known throughout his life as his name no longer seemed as fitting, and instead felt...lacking, a strange sense of incompleteness that he knew, as factually as the need for breath, was because that title was reserved for what once was. That name was for _one _person.

He was not alone anymore. The name was close, but not _quite _the proper fit.

Loki was the one who fell off the BiFrost and was left to die. That name belonged to the dead now. He might still claim ownership of it, but he had been made anew.

"Once...I _wass_ Loki, of Assgard. Now..."

The symbiote shifted, rippling across the lean expanse of flesh like the movement of a turbulent ebony sea. Looking at the slick, dark semi-fluid covering, he was reminded of the blood that bubbled up, blackened and sticky, from warriors' wounds by blades or snake bites imbibed with poison. The glistening, sickly feeling, washed away by burning healing stones, foul-tasting potions, bowls of bitter water and herbs that stung, ointments emitting rotten odours...

_The remedy and the hurt often feel one and the_ _same_, the healers had once told him, as he had watched men and women shudder and writhe in the grasp of fevered agony.

A smirk danced across the pale mouth as a word bubbled up from the link, the symbiote's voice curling around the syllables in a wisp-like, paper-thin purr within the shared mental space, stroking each piece like the silken fur of a snow leopard.

"_We _are Eitr, and we are burdened with gloriouss purposse."

A flicker of movement in the corner; the man in the flannel shirt who had stood at the control panel earlier was getting up from a kneeling position on the floor, apparently after checking for life signs in the too-still form of an agent on the ground.

"Loki? As in, brother of Thor? _That _Loki?," he inquired, brow furrowed warily.

The reaction was instantaneous: a surge of emotion blossomed within, the four letters forming the label for a being whose existence meant so many things.

A whisper of smothered, half-choked affection, the last real truth he had spoken without pain behind it in what felt like eons. _"Never doubt that I love you."_

Tendrils of still-raw pain, coals of smouldering rage, a torrent of frigid, slate-grey despair. _You didn't catch me when I let go. __You let me fall, fall down, down, down, into **their **hold, and you didn't find me, no matter how much I cried for you. You heard me when we were young, why did that end when we grew older? _

A double-ended spike of loathing. _You claimed before you reached the chin of the Allfather in height that you would kill every last remnant of our childhood nightmare, and then when we traveled to Jotunheim you tried to live up to that claim with all the bloody vigour of Yggdrasil-devouring Nidhogg. Did he tell you yet that meant you have to kill me too? He never claimed differently to me. Did he ever, to any at all? _

There was a faint prodding sensation from within from the symbiote, snapping him out of his darkening thoughts and pulling him back to the precarious situation.

_The human with the eye covering iss sspeaking. _

_Iss it important?_

_Let'ss ssee._

"We have no quarrel with your people," Fury spoke up, one hand held out in what appeared to be somewhat grudging placation.

"An ant hass no quarrel with a boot," came the returning quip, quick to form as the lies he had forged throughout the life he had lost after his fall, and Loki cannot help the burn of dark satisfaction in the words, because they _were _ants, in all honesty, when he had known them.

The visits he and Thor had taken to this planet, sneaking off-world in those most secret of passages to avoid the Gate-keeper's all-seeing eyes, in all the arrogant springtime bloom of adolescence, looming over the people who had stared, dirty-clothed and bug-eyed, as they had proclaimed themselves gods, drunken on their own foolishness and a power they could claim over a race of beings who had barely left their swaddling clothes in comparison to the people of Asgard in terms of the growth of burgeoning civilization. He had watched as they scurried to and fro, clustered together in budding towns and villages, ruled over by royalty of some sort, growing and harvesting and slowly, ever so meticulously, learning and adapting.

But unlike then, when he had been younger, he now thought of a very different meaning for applying the label of _ant _to a human.

Ants, he remembered, were generally weak, easily crushed when _alone_, but together...when amassed and roused to defend themselves, ants were biologically driven for unleashing a stinging, burning, chaotic hell upon whoever was foolish or mad enough to try to step on them. The anthill would surge up and eagerly consume, and all that would be left of the attempt was a corpse to be picked clean, dissected and devoured down to nothing but bare bones and teeth, bleached white by time and flesh long since stripped away by billions of hungry maws.

_Eitr, they that esscaped the Void, all to kick the anthill, all to make it bite and ssting, _the symbiote sing-songed, a dark, eerie, off-tune ditty of bitterness and bite, and Loki cannot help but sing along to it, riding the cold burn of the truth in the words until the mindscape hummed and rang with bells tinged with shadow that ebbed and flowed like the tides of the Cosmic Sea. _  
_

The human was glaring at him, that one visible eye narrowed in what was unmistakably rage as he leaned forward. "You planning to step on us?"

_No, because an opponent that cannot even musster the sstrength to fight off the bootss of one man on hiss back will sstand no chance againsst that of hundredss of thoussandss. W__e mean to kick you until you fight back and crussh the filth that we had to bring to your tiny world until they are nothing but piless of flessh and bone that not even the ravenss would be vulgar enough to try gorging themsselvess on. But if it makess you better ssuited for thiss war upon your doorsstep..._

"No, not_ yet_ at leasst. We come with glad tidingss, of a world made free. Perhapss you'd be interessted?"

On the contrary, he looked angrier than before. Perhaps he had pushed him too far? Or, possibly, too little?

"Free from _what, _exactly?"

Loki felt a slight grin tug at the side of his mouth, the scepter held loosely between thin fingers as he began moving around the room, that soul-deep, instinctive need to speak and elaborate rearing up like an incensed serpent, fangs bared and poison-drenched to drip golden death upon dark earth. To the side, Barton seemed to be regarding the conversation rather like a sparring match, eyes flicking back and forth as if unsure which person to keep focusing on. The symbiote hummed inwardly, regarding the action with an almost childish amusement.

"Freedom, of coursse. Freedom is life'ss greatesst lie," the words are garbed in silver, but they taste poison-bitter on his tongue, because he knows _this _in itself is a lie, a charade to keep up to keep the humans angry, on their toes, because freedom, _real _freedom, is life's greatest boon and _ignorance _is the greatest lie.

He would know.

But the humans, at least these ones, don't seem to know this, and so he continues. "Once you accept that, in your heart..."

Movement blurred across the edge of his vision; the symbiote rippled nervously, a mental hiss emitted in warning of _Human behind you, behind you, sstrike firsst _and then he twisted around and the scepter connected with a flannel-clad chest. Black surged up bright eyes, then faded to neon blue, and then the man's expression became placid, almost dreamy. Loki wondered, almost idly, what the needle-sharp croons of the Mind Gem had used to convince him. A rapid succession of emotions flood through the link from the scepter for a moment, rustles of paper and scribbles of equations and a blossoming of images of that woman of Thor's and her friend, and then a name washed up like a pebble licked clean by the waves: _Dr. Erik SSelvig, asstrophyssicisst. __  
_

"...You will know peace." _Another lie, how many more before thiss iss over? How many musst feel the too-bright glow that will burn out their thoughtss and leave them puppetss for merely another puppet in turn to pull their sstringss for dancing?_

Judging by Fury's expression, he isn't agreeing either. "Yeah, you say peace, I kind of think you mean the other thing. That's not a good choice to make here."

_You'd be right, but neither do you know how many timess recently **I've** been wanting to be wrong. I tried war once, and look where it got me. Pain and abandonment at the bottom dregss of the Nine Realmss, kicked and beaten, whipped like an unruly cur into grudging obedience. Thiss iss not the game I like to play, that **we **like to play, this brutissh show of unrefined sstrength and no real proper planning, but you don't know that, either, do you?_

But before further barbs can be traded, a soft coughing became audible, filtered through with help from the symbiote, and Loki's gaze flickered from the man with the eyepatch to the newly changed Hawk. Barton's expression had become slightly worried as he looked up at the vacuum chamber of the ceiling, and it soon became apparent why: the Tesseract's glowing like a supernatural beacon, lighting up the top of the room with an energy cloud bursting with plumes of white-blue flame and light, rapidly building up to what looked to be a potential implosion.

"Sir, Director Fury is only stalling. This place is about to blow and drop a hundred feet of rock on us. He means to bury us."

The cold glint in the single eye was calm, absolute, stoic as the mountains, imposing as the great trunk of Yggdrasil. "Like the pharaohs of Odin."

Loki merely blinked at the comment, wondering if it had really been so long since his last visit that the humans now confused the burial rituals of ancient Egypt with those of the Asgardians and ancient Nordic peoples, and then Selvig spoke up, looking worried.

"He's right, the portal is collapsing inward. You've got maybe 2 minutes before this goes critical."

_Hmm, in that casse..._

"Well, then...," he spoke up, "let'ss get going, sshall we?"

A slight jerk of the head is shown to Barton, and, as predicted of his new assistant, the man pulled out the pistol and fired, the _bang _echoing off the walls as Fury crumpled to the ground like a marionette whose strings have been cut. The briefcase containing the Tesseract is picked up and snapped shut, and they leave the laboratory with due haste. Judging by Selvig's darting glances at the locked case, the mind that Loki had seen full of equations and a burning need for knowledge was already proverbially salivating in anticipation of examining the cosmic cube.

_We sshould have eaten the one-eyed one._

_No, if we did that, he wouldn't be able to ssound the alarm afterwardss. Barton sshot him, but he won't bleed out before he can alert the other people in the building._

_Sstill think we sshould have gotten a bite. _

_If we eat everything you ssay desservess to be eaten, there would be no humanss left in the facility._

_Don't care, sstill hungry, and you ssaid the Hawk wass not for eating..._

_...No, we can't eat the sscientisst either._

_...One bite? _

_...No._

* * *

The humans were certainly a persistent lot, he had to give them that.

The pursuit Fury and his people had given during their escape from S.H.I.E.L.D. had been quite an impressive set of maneuvers, but the facility's bunker had come fully equipped with more than enough cars to load up with stolen equipment and converted agents for a proper getaway. Firing at them from atop the bed of a Midgardian truck had been quite the novel experience, although the drive-by shooting had been a bit difficult to pull off while the vehicle was going at such a rapid speed. The tunnel collapse, at least, looked as if it would delay them for a time, given the amount of rocks that had fallen.

The helicopter had, admittedly, been a _tad _enjoyable to blast apart, but the Director had fired out of it at one of his minions, which was unacceptable. Loki had no intention of doing _everything_ on his own, the very concept was exhausting. In order for the plan to work, Barton had to live, and bullets were an obstacle in the way of that objective.

But the human had also possessed the sense to jump out and survive, so the overall damage, he decided, was minimal in that case.

The research facility, however, did not seem likely to be ignored as easily. The Tesseract's earlier energy buildup had swallowed the building, and a good expanse of the surrounding desert area, from existence in a hungry maw of white-hot light, vanishing in on itself as if the Norns had pulled out a few of the universe's strings and torn a star out of the night sky.

A few _bangs _echoed across the silent landscape as the truck drove out further, and as the vehicle trekked past miles of rock and sand, Loki reveled in the smirk that formed as Fury glared daggers from the other side of the desert, gun clenched tight in one gloved hand.

After a few seconds, he braced himself for the energy loss and cast a spell to listen in; the price was somewhat steep given his condition, but he needed to know as soon as possible if the humans had amassed any sort of proper offensive movement yet. If stealing an unstable power source wouldn't rouse this planet to fight, something more drastic may need to be done, and getting so many people angry at once is _exhausting_.

A moment or two of silence stretched out into miles of quiet as the tires spun across the ground, and then his efforts were rewarded as words became audible.

_"Sound the general call..."_

_"This is a LEVEL SEVEN..."_

_"...right now, we are at war."_

A beat of silence, and then a pair of words crackled through the air like a streak of lightning, words that are worrying, warming, welcoming, warning, all at once. The humans, it seems, are on their feet now, readying themselves for the next round of this game, and from what he had gleaned from the conversation, they had their potential secret weapon ready to assemble. _  
_

Loki grinned in the dark, the curved slice of bone-white glinting eerily as a crescent moon of fangs to sink into the shadows. _The Avengerss, hmm? Sso you aren't completely unprepared for thiss...you will need it, if you're to tear into the little "gift" we brought you._

The symbiote rumbled and rolled within like the clouds gathering overhead, a quivering live wire of energy that washed through their shared body like a sip of hot soup on a hunting trip's frigid night. _Fight ssoon?_

_Oh, yess. Fight **very **ssoon. _


	3. A Dash of Delirium

**A/N: A reminder for those who may or may not have read the last chapter: the storyline is _roughly_ the same, but omits what I consider the "unnecessary filler" scenes (the "assemblage" of the Avengers Initiative did occur like in the film, but "offscreen" from this story). As a result, not everything will be the same, and you can expect S.H.I.E.L.D. to hold a darker, clinical view of the God of Mischief (if you need an example, think of how humans generally view mutants in the Marvel universe: if it's not human, it doesn't deserve human rights). Also, I don't have a lot of writing experience for the more "dark" aspects of Marvel characters, so if someone's too OOC or too cold for you, I suggest that you find something else on this site to suit your tastes. **

**DISCLAIMER: As usual, I own nothing potentially financially valuable of Marvel, and only can claim possession of this story, nothing else. No phrases/paraphrases of the film's quotes are used with the intention of anything other than entertainment purposes.**

**WARNING: Some disturbing imagery, semi-graphic violence, foul language, gore and dark humor (this _does_ include the infamous "eyeball" scene).**

**On a less creepy note, Happy Canada Day! I hope you all enjoy this day of celebration for our lovely northern neighbors. **

* * *

It wasn't the best of bases, he grudgingly admitted, but it would serve its purposes for what he had planned.

Having left S.H.I.E.L.D. and its labyrinth of buildings, bunkers, and transportation garages behind, the next stop was to set up shop and establish a temporary headquarters with which to stockpile supplies, prepare for the invading forces, and further examine the Tesseract. Selvig had been given a space to work in, complete with multiple pieces of equipment_ liberated _from several of the best research facilities Midgard had to offer. Judging by the security he had been forced to infiltrate for such pieces of technology, the _CERN _facility the humans had made would be most upset to find their entire particle physics laboratory had vanished. Hopefully the magic expenditure would be worth it, as he did not think he currently had sufficient energy to placate the symbiote enough to prevent the consumption of the scientist in retaliation otherwise.

Watching the scientist working frantically upon the CMS devide as if it were the Neolithic discovery of portable flame, he took in the sight of dark, puffy bags under the man's wild-looking eyes, the sweaty forehead, increasingly shaking hands, and rapid breathing, and wondered if he should command the human to rest before he killed himself through overwork. The idea of procuring another scientist specializing in the Tesseract seemed tedious, too time-consuming, and having human deaths pile up on his hands unnecessarily would only lead to more savagery from the opposing side. He wanted their ire roused and their fighting forces ready, but to stroke the flames of war too well would lead to the inferno raging out of control, and leave _all_ burned in its wake.

Engineering such meticulously choice destruction was not an easy task, but keeping the kill count unpredictably low for an invasion could have potential benefits later. A reduced prison sentence, perhaps? A few seeds of doubt sowed?

Contemplation, however, could wait. He had known the risks, and now, he had to play the game.

Taking a moment, Loki dismissed the humans from the room, ordering a halt of operations for a few short hours of recuperation. Waiting a few moments in the quiet, he relaxed slightly as he took in a deep breath, his body resonating with the macabre siren song of the symbiote's inner movements, feeling the caress of the dark tendrils around bones, bathing flesh, binding with blood, the shared heartbeat echoing with a continuous repetition forged in the crucible of the dark chrysalis they had clawed their way out of onto a barren belt of rocks a million miles away.

_Da, Da, Da, Da... _

The faster cardiac muscle movement throbbed almost painfully beneath his ribs, the physical changes pumping blood far more quickly throughout the body for rapid-fire oxygen distribution to muscle mass. He felt a thrumming in his limbs, the need for movement a not-quite-painful ache, a mild burning that would grow to a raging inferno when the time for battle came knocking like the hands of the dead. The symbiote was in a constant restless state, and he found himself much the same way, unease pricking needle-sharp teeth into his senses as he waited warily for further instructions.

He _hated _taking orders, and being forced to wait for commands like a common hunting hound was a degradation too disgusting to bear sparing thoughts for. Even grudgingly done, the act was equivalent to crawling belly-first through the mud and muck like a lowly beast, and only the thought of dragging his unholy "employer" through the same sludge before a slow, agonizing demise was enough to make him bend enough for the barest impression of kneeling upon the ground.

But he needed to report, or else the Mad Titan may become suspect that something was amiss, and neither he or his companion felt eagerness concerning the prospect of _more _torture.

Lowering himself to the floor to recline, he let the noisy hum of machinery from the surrounding laboratory fall away, ebbing into the background as the symbiote fluttered within, spinning a cocoon of mental barriers as he added his own contribution, weaving protective spells together in an interlocking series of traps and mazes to protect their mind with the aid of misdirection and years of meticulous mental encryption; all the while, damage done by the Mind Gem was being continuously repaired by both occupants as best as possible. The work was arduous and lengthy, but fortifying their sanctuary would be well worth the effort in the end.

Neither of them could afford to lose their only proper stronghold. A man's home may be his castle, but the only palace he held residence in now was of the mind, and if that was laid siege to successfully, both he and the symbiote would be conquered and torn down into ruin, and all would go with them into the darkness. To fall to such a scourge of destruction would leave naught but all-devouring time to fling them into the cold, misty arms of death, and all things worse.

Preparation was key to survival in this game. Spells and webbing would offer little protection from the horrors the mind could produce when under mental torture, but even a scrap of protection was better than none at all. Meditation would send him back to the Mad Titan for a report on the invasion, but it would also help keep him calm during the interrogation on his progress.

Slowly but surely, the room began to fade away into darkness, giving way to frigid air, shadowed rocks, and an unsettling sensation of entrapment as the throne room of the Other materialized around him. The symbiote shifted uneasily, rippling across and under skin like a cloak in the wind, and after a few moments, settled into place as what Loki found, with a bit of surprise, was an exact replica of his armor, complete with the horned helmet he had lost upon the BiFrost. The weighted sensation was oddly comforting, and a wave of silent gratitude welled up at the gesture; even if the armor held little use in their current position, the symbolic support offered was clear, every particle of fabricated protection pressing in like a full-body shield.

Shivering slightly from the oppressive atmosphere, he approached the throne and its occupant, head bowed slightly in a pretense of deference as he waited to be addressed. The shadows flickered somewhere out of sight, the air strung with minuscule ice crystals like a yuletide wreath of tiny blades.

"The Chitauri grow restless, little godling. Had I known it would take you so long to prepare for the invasion, I would have offered you a more _potent_ incentive for your compliance."

The look upon the dark face was unsettling, a closed off expression of cold detachment with pitiless eyes that hinted of rage simmering under the surface, ready to strike out like an incensed serpent. Loki stifled the unpleasant urge to shudder, the symbiote twisting in place to strengthen the armor around his torso and reinforce Itself around vital organs in a silent attempt to help calm his increasingly palpitating heartbeat.

"Let them go at themselvess," he said, mind furiously calculating placations to offer, "thinning the rankss will weed out any potentially unfit troopss. I will lead them into gloriouss battle againsst thosse that opposse your will."

The dark expression did not waver in response, and the unnerving chatter of the creatures lurking in the shadows compelled a mounting sense of unease as laughter boomed out from the hulking figure on the throne. "Battle, you claim? Against the meager might of Midgard? They are but insects, fit to be crushed like vermin."

_Clearly you have never sseen an anthill devour a fallen foe and pick itss bones clean of flessh, if you have ssuch confidence in your victory thiss early in the game, filth. _

Though it took all his resolve not to speak it, he managed to quell the urge to rush in, bandying words like his lost knives. To go into battle, even a battle of words, could so easily wreck his plans with as much regard as a rock through rice paper, and here, summoned to this inhospitable place, he was without proper firepower as backup. The symbiote was a wild card to this game, running off instinct and emotional responses; to reveal his companion's presence, even in self defense, would render It vulnerable to the Other, and both of them vulnerable to additional punishment. He could only be grateful that the altered speech patterns, at least for the moment, seemed to go unnoticed.

Loki stood silently for a moment, head bowed so as not to look into the soulless gaze and find himself lacking nerve. He could not afford it, _they _could not afford it, not in this crucial moment when lying was so important. Summoning his nerve, he forced back the urge to shout slurs against his "handler" and struggled to curb his tongue.

"Gloriouss, not lengthy...," and yet here, it seemed, he could not restrain himself, "_If _your force iss truly the formidable army you claim."

For a moment, there was silence, and he cursed himself for the loose hold on his words. Anger, fear, gnawing hunger, and so little sleep were indeed a terrible combination to endure during a progress report.

The walls began to quake ominously, the air seeming to thin out and compress itself as the cold grew bone-deep. "You _dare _question us?," came the deadly hiss, "You question _HIM?_ He, who put the scepter in your hand, who gave you ancient knowledge when you were cast out, defeated, a lowly beast left to rot at the bottom of the universe like so much garbage?"

At this, indignation bubbled up like fresh blood from half-healed scars, and rage along with it, scorching and heady as a strong draft of mead, burning the inside of his throat as he spat out the words like a mouthful of charred meat. The altered speech warped slightly, twisted back into a parody of his old mannerisms as bitter memories welled up.

"_I _wass a king! The rightful king of Assgard, betrayed, betrayed by thosse under my rule, the pack of turncoatss! I held the throne ass wass decreed by the Allmother, and _sstill _they left to fetch their golden prince, like a flock of lost ssheep braying for their wayward idiot ssheperd!"

The symbiote's writhing like a nest of kicked serpents, strong and primal and singing along in a duet to the hymns of the dark rage that threatened, for a blistering, frightening moment, to consume him. But the anger is on his behalf, a hissing, spitting, venomous creation baring fangs to defend It's host, a nest that is home and haven in the dark, cold reaches of this ugly rock so many stars away from Midgard, and plans, and the base they had left to report to this _thing. _Loki, having to fight to push down his own tempestuous emotions, could barely hold back the tangled, squirming mass of semi-fluid from pouring forth from their shared body and exposing the front of deference, even grudging deference, that they've put up.

But it appeared, at least for now, that the outburst of rage and vitrol would be brushed aside in favor of the proverbial bigger picture. If he did not feel such a sense of relief upon seeing the almost bored expression upon the Other's visage, he would almost feel insulted.

"Your ambition is _little_," came the derisive drawl, "Born of childish need and foolish rage. We look beyond the realm of Midgard, to the greater worlds that the Tesseract will unveil for us."

A smirk slithered into place at these words, despite the spark of rage still smouldering within. He may have been the most level-headed of his age group back in Asgard, but he had not survived in a world of brutish force with his knives alone.

As it was, the urge to take a vocal jab at the being before him was too tempting to resist, punishment be damned for now. He had orders, but he would not crawl like a starving hound for them; shackled under the chains of his employment he may be, but they had not broken him, not enough to leave him fully compliant. He could suffer a few burns to play with fire yet.

Besides, if he could not have a little fun in this unhappy errand, what was the _point_?

"You don't have the Tessseract _yet_."

The lunge taken by the Other in his direction in response was both a slight shock and the inspiration for a jolt of adrenaline-laced fear; within a millisecond, instinct took over and the scepter's held in front of him, the sharp tip extended and glinting dully in the light of the throne room. The symbiote let out a cacophony of mental noise like an angered jungle cat, yowling a mental drumbeat of battle as blood thundered through their shared body in a race to aid in the triggered "fight or flight" instinct, and it took every ounce of control he possessed to keep from letting his other half out to unleash an onslaught of destruction, as much as he desperately wanted, and still wants, to watch that dismal face contort in an macabre opera of varying agonies.

He refused to think about the slight tremor in his hands as he held the scepter before him. To dwell on it would open upon a veritable Pandora's box of unwelcome thoughts.

"We don't normally threaten, at leasst not sso..._blatantly_," he forced out, "but until _we_ open the doorss, until your force iss ourss to command, you are but wordss, and _we _are the massterss of wordss, not _you_."

The words shook, but held steady in their audibility, and he wondered, for a mad second, if he would be punished for it on the spot.

A harsh laugh, rough as nails gouging through sheets of glass, echoed suddenly through the chamber.

"You will have your war, little Asgardian. But know _this_...if you fail, if the Tesseract is kept from us, there will be no realm, no barren moon, no crevice or filthy hole in the ground where he can't find you hiding. You think that you know pain, boy? He will make you _long _for something as sweet, as _forgiving_, as the gift of _pain_."

_If we hadn't been told all of thiss beforehand, perhapss it would actually be more frightening. _As it was, the parting speech held nothing he did not already fear, though fear _was_ always a powerful motivator. He forced down the urge to make another caustic remark. Acting mordant again so soon would likely lead to proper torture before he was returned to Midgard, and far worse than his time in the Void, if the look on the Other's visage was anything to go by.

Silence filled the air, stifling and cold, as the Other reached out and placed a large, bear-like hand on his head. Loki forced himself to ignore the instinctive urge to shudder and draw back as energy rushed forth and all but flung both him and the symbiote back through the tempestuous connection to Midgard.

Slamming into the harsh surface of the floor, he watched through a dim haze of pain as the portal closed back up again.

As the lingering soreness began to recede, a slick, coppery tang became uncomfortably noticeable, and he spat out a mouthful of blood, wiping away the remnants of the spit ichor with the back of a scraped hand. _Admittedly, that could have gone much worsse._

_We sshould have eaten him. Firsst the Hawk, then the sscientisst and the one-eyed one, and now the nassty thing that called you garbage. Sso much food left untouched...he looked sso crunchy, too._

Loki stared at the fading remnants of the portal, considering the idea in light of the unpleasant conversation at the other end of the universe. His companion _did_ sound rather put out...

_...Next time, promisse, flessh and boness and all. _

For now, he had to prepare. According to the clock installed on the wall before him, the humans would be coming back soon, and the next stage of the plan was to commence shortly after.

_No resst for thosse like us, hmm?_

The symbiote rumbled in agreement. _None, but food would be good. _

* * *

The artwork, he admitted mentally, was rather beautiful to look at. The brief visionary respite before the horror began was appreciated, with the breathtaking rainbow of colours done by meticulous hands centuries ago offering a subtle treat for the two of them. The symbiote took to observing the observational feast of Midgardian artwork with vigour, taking in the faint scents of dried paints, charcoals, and marble and coaxing the multitude of colours to bloom across the shared mental landscape like a blossoming field of wildflowers, the simple joy in the activity easily contagious.

With the base established and a series of backup plans thought out for emergencies, the next stop was to secure a proper supply of iridium to stablize and secure the Tesseract's power. The Hawk was to take care of stealing a cache of the substance, but a distraction was required in order to divert the public's attention sufficiently away, as well as a scan of the retina of one of the humans attending the art gala, as the vault of iridium was apparently important enough to warrant extra identification.

Loki, being mostly estranged from attention, found the opportunity to act as said distraction rather refreshing.

Given that S.H.I.E.L.D. would likely have begun broadcasting images of both himself and the missing personnel as soon as they had traveled out of tracking range, Loki had decided to change his appearance so as to better blend in with the masses of humans running around. Numerous moments of observation of the local populace were gained from the minds of the converted S.H.I.E.L.D. agents using a brush of the scepter, and after a few cursory checks to ensure the validity of said information, an suitable set of apparel was chosen.

It was true that the scarf could be considered a _bit_ much, but the green and gold motif felt too close to his signature colours to give up. The suit and long coat, at the very least, offered a modicum of camouflage within this place, given the amount of humans swanning around in designer finery and glittering jewelry like dozens of strange, silk-robed peacocks. Fluted glasses of fine wine and champagne drifted through the sea of coiffured heads and swanlike necks, floating on silver trays acting as elegant rafts pushed about by black-gloved zephyrs of manicured hands. Tiny platters of treats flitted here and there, bearing aloft offerings of bite-size meats and cheeses upon wafer-thin crackers and aromatic bread slices. Music from a sizable orchestra wafted through the air, the notes shining like fireflies on a summer evening.

But time was of the essence, and he needed to initiate the next phase of the game.

Taking one last look at the art piece before him, he turned and began the journey down to the floor below, focusing on the faint _thud, thud, thud _of the scepter, now sporting the appearance of a long, elegant cane topped with a faceted, jewel-like version of the Mindgem. The sound echoed like the mourning bell of a church during a wake, distant and haunting, a reminder that from here on out, the game would get far, far more dangerous.

Looking down at the mob of people knotted together, he began scanning the crowd for the target human. The symbiote twisted in place, resettling into It's more favoured internal place of cocooning around the god's ribcage, and, after a moment, spoke.

_Too many humanss to pick through. Eyess need to ssee better!_

_What do you ssuggesst?_

A second, then two, flickered by, as quick as the flutter of a hummingbird's wings, and then a tingling sensation built up behind his eyes as the symbiote surged forwards and then around the optic disk and nerves, seeping into blood vessels. Darkness pooled across his vision for a brief moment before receding like the ebb of the tide as the familiar semi-liquid state of his companion flowed across the cornea and pupil of each eye. It took all the self-control he had not to adversely react to the temporary vision impairment, the instinctive surge of panic at the sudden loss of sight warring with the knowledge that the symbiote would never do anything to cause him injury._  
_

When the darkness cleared away, he had to blink for several seconds, trying to reconcile his previous vision with what was now before him: everything now looked much like how it should through a high-definition lens, with the colours vibrant and each detail as wickedly sharp as his lost knives. The sensational input was quite staggering.

Within a few seconds, the enhanced vision became of use as the human was spotted talking to the crowd at a low podium, and Loki began descending the rest of the stairway, ignoring the urge to move at a less sedate pace. If he hurried too quickly, the other occupants of the building may become worried that something was amiss, and having to resort to teleportation or illusion-induced disguises to return to such a regal event without suspicion being cast upon him would be unpleasantly draining. No food or drink had been consumed since arriving on Midgard, and depleting his magic reserves unnecessarily was an ugly idea.

As he reached the ground floor, the humans chattering away carelessly in glittering clusters like handfuls of raw gems, the symbiote flattened It's hold on the scepter ever so slightly, reducing the density of the semi-fluid parts of Itself flowing around the surface. If the scepter was reinforced _too _well in the next few moments, their target's skull might cave in from the solidity of the weapon on contact, and it would be unlikely that enough of an eye could be scavenged to be used as a passkey. To add further cause for restraint, the human capacity for violence and gore might be rather spectacular at times, but witnessing a man lose an eye would likely be a bit less traumatizing than seeing the entire head cave in like rotted fruit. S.H.I.E.L.D. _was _still hunting for him, so it was best to _try _to keep the bloodshed to a minimum.

Ten steps, then several more, and they're in attacking range. The target human barely had time to blink before the scepter's swung like a baseball bat and made its collision with the side of the man's head along with a brutally satisfying _crack_, and then he dropped as quickly as if a switch had been flipped. As Loki seized the human by the nearest available body part in range (and the back of that neck was rather pudgy, perhaps the human indulged in too many sweets), he wondered, almost absentmindedly, who the first person to call for help was. There's certainly more than enough people panicking.

The stone slab, ornately carved on either side in the semblance of a pair of bulls in their prime, looked rather promising for the humans to have a good view of the watered-down carnage. Shoving the clearly confused and petrified man onto the art piece, he pulled out the rather strange item Barton had told him to use, wondering for a split second how the narrow silver tube would be able to retrieve an eyeball.

_Am I to place it over the human'ss eye ssocket and have it ssuck out the required organ? _

The answer to such questioning was given seconds later, as a sharp set of rotatable pincers opened up, whirring like a set of miniature bone saws and glowing blue as the Tesseract. Without pausing, he slammed the device into place, and the screams emitted in response as the man twitched and spasmed on the hard rock were disgustingly promising.

_Aah, sso **that'ss** how it workss. Fasscinating._

The people around them continue to scream and cry, babble frantically for help in all sorts of languages, or run out the doors as if the hounds of Helheim have scented their flesh, and the situation would be almost funny in a horrifying way, but there's a man pinned against the stone slab like some morbid offering to the gods, as if to hold out for each their own pound of flesh. He thought of what was occurring on the other end of the torturous-looking instrument, at the three-dimensional eyeball scan forming in midair, floating in the clawed grip of the twin to this strange tool with the help of the Hawk.

The iridium would be secured quite soon, if all went well. Perhaps it was lucky for the humans that such a thing was so, for if not, a mass silencing charm would not go amiss in this crowd, even if would cause _more _chaos._  
_

Judging by the razor-sharp tips being used to clench the eye in place and pull it forwards to the scanner in the center of the tube, the fragile bit of anatomy would likely be useless by the time the scanning was completed. Darkening streams of a pinkish hue had already begun to seep out from between the bruised, pried open eyelids and sharp lengths of metal, an indication of the bursting of fragile blood vessels. If he forced any more pressure on the eye socket, the organ would likely rupture, and then there would be vitreous fluid clogging up the delicate parts of the machine.

_Hmm...it appearss we're in luck. Thiss human issn't going to need thiss any longer._

_Doess that mean...?_

_Yess, now eat up. _

The symbiote needed no more motivation; a column of glistening ebony seemingly _melted_ off the god's coat sleeves, surging forward and and reaching out a half-dozen pencil-thin tendrils to wrap around the point of connection between the human and the pincers. With a sickening squelch, It poured into the cracks. The man's struggling and shrieking resumed afresh for several long moments, before he shuddered and finally went limp, slumping into a faint across the gold-plated surface of the slab.

The humans were screaming even more now; one elderly woman had even collapsed into her husband's arms and was being revived with the help of a lace fan. But the noise was rather unimportant in comparison to the bombardment of sensations being caused by the consumption of the eyeball.

When he and the symbiote had bonded, he had understood, on an instinctive level, that they would share and experience everything. But he not quite expected _this._

The taste was _ambrosial. _The cornea dissolved like wet tissue paper, and the iris, the pupil within it, and the lens followed in rapid succession with a mild, slightly sweet flavour, like bubbles of slow-burning smoke with a dusting of sugar. The layers of flesh compounding the eye were stripped off one by one like carving slivers of well-done brisket, the jelly-like vitreous humor sucked cleanly away as the optic disk and nerves were engulfed. An explosive palette of colours bloomed as each flavour registered, creating sparks of smoky mauve, whorls of shimmering coral, streaks of milky jade and pinpricks of gossamer-thin champagne. Within a few short moments, the entire socket was stripped and sterilized, ensuring no additional leakage, and a minuscule dose of sealing magic repaired and blocked off the tearing point left by the loss of the optic nerve's former connection to the brain.

Loki let out a low hum of satisfaction as the last of the globular organ disappeared entirely. _Chewier than expected, and a bit too watery at the front, but certainly not unpalatable. _

Their shared mind resonated with the sound of the symbiote's purr of fulfillment, the raw edge of that old, gnawing hunger having been sated, at least for now._ Yess, deliciouss._

* * *

By now, the room had been emptied (though the echoing screams of terrified humans still could be heard beyond the hall doors), he had gotten what he had come for, and a light snack had even been procured. _Not too sshabby. Now, on to the next move._

Pulling the clawed grip free of the now vacant eye socket, the device retracted in on itself, refolding back into a slim silver tube that was dropped into a coat pocket with ease. Humming, the god straightened up, turned away from the prone man lying in a stupor on the slab, and began to walk towards the exit doors. The symbiote flickered and rippled, a twisting shadow of motion that warped the suit, scarf, tie, and other such accessories, reemerging as the catsuit that allowed freer movement. Loki could only marvel inwardly at the rapid changes: a few seconds of blinking, and the deceptively fragile-looking body covering was in place, form-fitting and pleasantly warm in the cool night air of Stuttgart. Instead of his former horned helmet, the symbiote had extended several large tendrils and fused them together to create a pair of twisted, curved horns on either side of his head, the tips sharp and the spiral pattern an unearthly shade of shadow-tinted grey-blue that loomed out of dark hair like some eerie rendition of a royal circlet. The effect was startling, despite being oddly light in weight.

_At leasst, in termss of advantageouss traitss, it'ss lesss perceptible combat gear than my actual battle armor..._

Judging by the low, rumbling purr resonating through their shared body, the symbiote agreed wholeheartedly.

Having reached the red-carpeted front entrance, he regarded the massive flood of terrified people, several running with stilettos swinging from manicured hands to help flee the scene without breaking a heel in the process. Screams lit up the air like close-range fireworks as men and women dashed across streets and even a nearby park to escape the horror that had been witnessed. Throngs of civilians who had not been privy to the scene of forced extraction were becoming increasingly worried and confused, milling around and trying to grab the nearest shrieking gala-goer by the arm to ask what had happened.

An incoming vehicle careened towards him as he stepped out into the streets, tires shrieking fit to break glass from the decibel level reached. Loki watched it for a moment, wondering if it was worth an expenditure of his magic to blast it apart for generating such an annoying noise. High-speed rubber spinning upon hard pavement was proving rapidly to be a _touch_ too shrill after listening to the screaming of dozens of frightened humans during an organ extraction such a short time ago, and the symbiote's own reaction to the noise was not empathetic either, darkening shades of grey displeasure rumbling through the mental landscape like rain-heavy storm clouds.

The sound grew closer, and one split-second decision later, the car was a newly lit mass of metal and robin's egg-blue flames left to flip and twist for several mad seconds, before finally coming to a stop upside-down by a nearby neon-lit cinema. Half a dozen people coming out of the nearby shops held out phones to record the anomaly.

A few moments passed as he weaved through the crowd, partially surprised by the lack of recognition shown as he walked through the human ranks like a ghost. Perhaps the panic overrode it?

_In that casse, let'ss give them ssomething new. _

Running forwards, he vaulted over a park bench, several fleeing people, and a good stretch of pavement before landing, feet-first and straight-backed, in front of the nearest crowd, the scepter held out like a sword as the Mindgem glowed violently. The symbiote rippled and surged across It's host, jagged shards of hardened semi-fluid appearing and disappearing haphazardly like a mad scientist's quilting pattern. Behind the expanding throngs of people, a portion of magic had been sacrificed for the creation of temporary duplicates to add to the intimidation.

Staring at the mass of humans, he considered the idea of bluntly demanding the submission of the populace. Several were quivering fit to wake the dishonored dead of Helheim as it was, and the smell of urine from the far side of the crowd left a telltale sign that someone had been frightened enough to soak themselves. _Given the fear rolling off them at the moment, there **iss **a chance they may give it to uss to prevent further desstruction..._

Brute force was not his preferred forte, given his strength in subtlety and the more silent dismantling and eradication of the enemy. But if the shock and awe approach would fan the flames of the opposition a little higher, a little closer to scalding, why not?

_Taunt the enemy enough and they'll come charging after you sseeing red, wanting nothing lesss than your head on a plate, bloody and raw. _

If the humans thought the enemy was the army he had been made to drag to their world, so much the better. Fostering a desire to eradicate what they believed to be a manifestation of his darker desires would only serve him well. Given the amount of people in this realm, it would assuredly be only a matter of time before the organization he'd stolen the Tesseract from would be mounting an offensive, and the rest of humanity would likely follow in such aggressive footsteps if their precious world was at stake.

It was really only a matter of taste, in the end, and even if he wasn't overly fond of the idea of shouting and demanding a successful subjugation to his whims as he had been forced to bear witness to countless times in youth by a certain God of Thunder, it would serve its purpose. A crude purpose, but a purpose nonetheless.

If he wanted to get humanity's attention, it seemed that throwing a right proper tantrum would be a choice option. It would attract the attention of the parental policing forces of this world, and when that happened, someone would be sent in to either apprehend or eradicate him. There would be no better way to warrant capture than by a show of theatrics, clear as a rescue beacon for gaining notice.

The path to take was clear. _Time to put on a little sshow._

He regarded the masses before him, scanning the frightened, sweaty faces and trembling hands, and felt a shiver of the old arrogance that had bubbled up like primordial ooze from the earth when he had visited, a thousand celestial axis-tilts and haggard lunar cycles ago, when he and his not-brother had been younger, drunk on a fermented brew of pride, power, and the foolish naivete knighted by the double-edged sword of a privileged existence.

"_Kneel_."

The word was laced with energy, solid as steel wrapped in silk, cutting as a guillotine. A quick, silent amplifying charm sent the syllables resonating throughout the block, clear as water in a cup.

Barely a heartbeat passes before those before him begin dropping to their knees, fear plainly visible in their eyes as they cringe and move as gingerly as if the ground was covered in broken glass and there were no shoes to cover feet.

_The act needss to be a bit more convincing, don't you agree?_

_Doess thiss mean more sstrutting? _

_Why not?_

He allowed a smile to form as he began walking forwards, inwardly wishing the motion didn't look as forced as it felt. This would not be an easy trick to pull off, but the payoff would be substantial if done right.

"Well, iss thiss not simpler for you, your _natural _sstate of being? Iss thiss not the unsspoken _truth _of humanity, the internal craving of ssubjugation, the freedom of allowing thosse above to make all the sserious choicess? You feel the lure of freedom, sstarlike in itss brilliance, sso bright it blindss you to all elsse, and in doing sso you are _losst, _losst in the mad sscramble for power, for identity, for_ undersstanding_. It diminisshess your life'ss joy, cutting it down to worry and fear, and to ssave yourselves you look for guidance, be it under your religion, your governing body, your family head. You were _made _to be ruled, and in the end, you will always kneel, because that iss how you know peace, the blisss of knowing ressponsibility resstss upon the sshoulderss of another, that you cannot be held accountable when wrongdoing befallss the world you know. You are freed from the sshackless of blame."

The crowd stared back, gazing at the shining blue light of the Mindgem like mice enthralled by the hypnotic sway of a serpent preparing to strike. He wondered who would have enough bravery, or potentially foolishness, to speak up and ignore the command of submission; not everyone could be expected to listen in a crowd, past memories of angered patrons in Asgard's bars had proven that innumerable times when they did not get their order of mead by a pretty wench in time.

A lone man, an elderly native of this country by the look of it, stood up defiantly, a blatant discoloration among the sea of kneeling, prostrate civilians.

"No, I won't. Not to men like you."

_Aah, we finally get a rebel. How refresshing. _

"I'm afraid you musst be misstaken, then, for there are no men like me." _I'm not a man, after all. Not anymore, if I ever wass. _

The man, to his credit, did not back down, seemingly unfazed by the rebuttal. "There will _always_ be men like you. Crazy ones, power-hungry and over their heads."

_Ssuch a fiery sspirit you have, you do not bend to the howling of the wind, do you, mortal? You are a mountain, unmoving, unchanging in your way of life. You will not bow to me. If there were more men like you, there would be no need for thosse like me to balance thiss out._

The symbiote shifted in place, anger bubbling up at the human's words of derision. Loki could not blame It, as this had been a rather long, tiring day. _**More** inssulting of hosst? We ought to eat you, melt the flessh from your boness, boil blood in veinss, chew off your-! _

_No, leave him. There iss not enough meat on him, and too many people will panic and try to pull him away before we could feed. We do not know where thosse handss have been, remember? _

But the human was, nonetheless, posing somewhat of a threat to the persuasive speech uttered earlier. Perhaps a silencing spell could be done, or a hex to vanish his mouth to shock him into silence? Public execution seemed too gory, but if he could go through all but the final motion of the act, the fear and suspense would serve well into crushing any lingering doubts as to whether this was real.

_A bit too flasshy, perhapss, but it will do. If thiss doessn't capture the humanss' attention, we might need to ressort to desstroying more buildingss._

The scepter glowed brighter, now almost blinding to look at in its terrible blue brilliance, and the humans began another round of screams, plainly horrified at the thought of witnessing public slaughter. Loki stared at the defiant man before him, refusing to cower even in the face of apparent death, eyes clear and unwavering as they met his own. Holding the weapon aloft, he looked over the aged frame, drawing out a few seconds in the act of scanning for the best spot to attack. In the distance, someone began crying.

_According to Barton, there are billionss of people in thiss realm, and millionss in thiss country alone. How iss it posssible that there issn't ssome ssort of offenssive ressponsse by thiss point-?_

Sirens blared out in the distance, loud and shrill and haunting; apparently, someone had finally managed to get in contact with law enforcement. He wondered if any of the humans' televised media had picked up on tonight's events yet.

The glow of the scepter's painful to witness now, glowing like with the blue-white flame of an impossibly captured supernova, and there's only a few moments longer that he can draw this out, people already were shifting in the background, restless, worried-

The scepter's light bursts open like a cracked egg, screams echoing in the background, and the old man _still_ doesn't move-

_Clang. _Slightly dazed from his sudden impact with the ground, Loki stared for a moment, analyzing what had suddenly appeared before him: a muscular man, young in appearance but with too-old eyes, clad in the most eye-searing combination of red, white, and blue he had seen since he had cursed Thor's favorite cape to turn into an itchy, powder blue rug smelling of unwashed bilgesnipe fur when they were several centuries old and the blonde fool had gone and spilled mulberry juice on his favorite incantation text. The elderly man, it appeared, had been saved from what would have likely been a searing-hot agonizing demise by the impromptu arrival of a large, circular shield held on the newcomer's arm, made of what seemed to be quite a powerful substance, considering that it had deflected the scepter's energy bolt so easily.

_Finally, the idiot cavalry arrivess._

Blinking the abrupt presence of flickering starlight from his vision, it became audible after a moment or two that the new human's talking. _It took them dayss to sscrounge together an offenssive front and their opening force sspendss it **talking**? There wass sspeaking during our arrival, but at leasst we fought in addition to it. Iss there a point to thiss without action to accompany it? _

"...we ended up disagreeing with each other. I'm not exactly fond of the bullying type, see."

Getting up, for a split second, proved to be nauseating, and he resisted the urge to vomit. _Whatever material that sshield iss comprissed of, it'ss quite ssolid. _

_Can we eat it?_

_...I don't think it'ss edible, but if he triess ussing it for a weapon, you're welcome to try. Perhapss the metal content will hold ssome nutritional value if abssorbed._

But the man with the shield's still looking at him, and a second glimpse of the round potential projectile jogged a chunk of memory viewed from Barton. _Hmm, sso that'ss who thiss iss...the good Captain'ss come to play hero, then. _

Spitting out a mouthful of pink-tinged saliva, Loki assessed the new opponent. _Sshield iss held primarily on the arm or one-handed, posssible hidden projectile weapon, likely a handgun like Barton hass. No true body armor ssave for the ssuit, but the material doess not look sufficiently sstrong enough to withsstand intensse damage...no, torsso iss a bit too bulky, ssome ssort of protective encassement for the chesst cavity, then?_

"A ssoldier, then, aren't you? A man out of time..."

By the grim expression on the other man's face, this cannot end well. "_I'm_ not the one who's out of time here."

The sound of rotating propellers overhead drew attention to the sky: a large aircraft (the _Quinjet, _Barton had called it) was hovering above the scene, a large, fierce-looking gun pointed directly at him by a beautiful-looking redhead (_Natassha Romanov_, one of Barton's precious people, he recalled). Loki cannot help but wonder slightly at the sheet audacity of it; do they even _remember _that bullets were, and likely always would be, next to useless concerning himself and his companion?

It appeared, at least for now, that such a crucial tidbit of information had been forgotten, as the woman was speaking, as assuredly and coldly as the formation of a glacier in winter. "Loki, drop the weapon and stand down, or the machine gun here's going to empty a round into your skull."

_I don't think sso. _

The scepter begins to glow again, for a split second becoming blinding, and then a bolt of sizzling blue energy shot out, careening toward the Quinjet like an attracted magnet. But Romanov, it appeared, was too smart for such a blatant move, and maneuvered her craft out of the way, albeit just in time, and in that exact moment, Rogers took the opportunity to fling his shield like the world's most potentially deadly boomerang. Dodging the blow leaves the sound of unearthly ringing in the air and a new long, shallow cut across Loki's jaw, and then the shield ricocheted back as if pulled on a string.

The crowd let out an explosion of cheering, frightened and exhilarated all at once.

The symbiote's mental shriek of rage at the injury, slight as it was, to It's host left the catsuit covering warping like a melting oil painting, and then the world dissolved into a series of punches, kicks, and tackles as Rogers took the opportunity to unleash a good seven decades' worth of repressed street-fighting and newly acquired boxing skills. The blows are solid, landing like a hail of rocks, and a new collection of bruises indeed seem a surety later on.

In turn, it was only fair to give back as good as was begotten. Twisting and squirming out of headlocks, choke holds, and other body contortions left his human opponent scrambling to keep hold, and spikes, barbs, needles, and even the improvised ridges and points of the teeth of wild predatory animals appeared repeatedly on the warping surface of the symbiote's organic material covering as Loki unleashed a series of close-range punches, the sharpened claw tips of enhanced nails tearing a half dozen new rips in the spandex of Roger's patriotic quasi-armor and drawing blood from a sizable collection of papercut-thin gouges in the skin underneath.

The shield, he had found, could be batted away with enough force put behind the blow, and watching the briefly mystified expression on the human's face when that happened was almost worth the blow to the left, then the right clavicle, in retaliation. Bruising the Captain's own collarbones with a well-placed kick had proved to be quite satisfying.

Trying, if only for the sake of theatrics, to get Rogers to kneel had been almost amusing. Getting flipped over and used as a would-be target for a sweeping kick, however, was unacceptable.

_If we can't eat the sshield, can we try and eat him?_

A sharp jab to the shoulder, and one painful refitting to readjust the dislocated bone structure later, Loki felt painfully tempted to agree.

* * *

Fighting came to an abrupt halt when the sharp, earsplitting radiance of heavy metal music erupted from the Quinjet's speakers like the siren song of some unholy parade of death, and when the one responsible for such an explosive concoction of noise finally touched down on the ground, Loki felt unsure whether or not he should fire at the man using the scepter purely for the sickening new headache he had been unceremoniously burdened with. Clasping his hands over his ears, a silently cast muffling charm offered a hint of relief, and the symbiote's ardent feeling of relaxation in the face of the spelled quiet suffused the mental landscape with some much-needed calm. Dull echoes of aching pain thudded through the shared body for several long, agonizing moments, throbbing like clusters of deep tissue bruises, and Loki wondered for a moment if incinerating the human who had caused both himself and his other half such discomfort was really so unneeded.

_Are you alright?_

_Don't like loud noisse. Noisse hurtss, hurtss badly. _

_Would you like me to sshoot him? _

_Hurt later, need ssilence. _

The mental conversation was put to a stop when the seemingly annoying presence in hot rod red and burnt gold let out a faint whirring noise, before a veritable portable arsenal of weapons fit for a king's army materialized from the deceptively too small-seeming confines of metal. The man looked up at the Quinjet for a second, projecting an aura of rather discomfiting smugness. "Did you _miss _me, Agent Romanov?," he called teasingly.

The symbiote regarded the intimidating-looking weaponry cache with what Loki knew within a millisecond was, of all things, annoyance. _Sstupid noissess musst sstop! _

A low whirring noise was all the warning given before the world went white and pain seared through every cell he shared. When he managed to open his eyes, there's an open, glowing palm held out before him, lit up and apparently recharging for another blast.

"Make a move, Reindeer Games, I dare you." The words, though mocking, held a razor's edge.

_What do you think we sshould do? _The symbiote's voice held a venomous edge, testament to the unpleasant feelings newly harbored to the man who seemed to be protected by a giant spray-painted collection of weapon-laden scrap metal. A fight, it seemed, would not go amiss.

But this is exactly what is needed: a chance to get _inside _the organization of humans wanting to fight against the Chitauri. Even as a prisoner, people were likely to talk and, eventually, slip up information concerning the current agenda for the ongoing battle.

_We wait. Let them take uss in, we can gain more information on their organization from the insside. Perhapss we can find someone conssidered expendable for eating. Both the man with the metal sshield and the one who makess the horrible excusse for mussic are to accompany uss, for ssecurity'ss ssake, it sseemss..._

_...If he makess more ugly ssoundss, the noisse-making partss are going to be crusshed._ The words flicker with tints of scarlet aggression and brewing power, a scalding promise.

But the symbiote has, nonetheless, agreed, and so he held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. The symbiote rippled and twisted for a moment, readjusting Itself to flatten back into the appearance of a harmless-looking black catsuit once more, and Loki cannot help the flicker of satisfaction that bubbled up when the change in body coverings elicited a half dozen choice swear words from both men before him.

"Smart move, now get up." Handcuffs were then supplied by way of a quick downward toss by Romanov, and with a snap and a flick of the wrist by Rogers, his hands gained new bindings. The symbiote's mental grumbling at the new sense of confinement was a rather amusing distraction as the Quinjet was lowered and Loki found himself shoved haphazardly into the closest available seat, strapped in tightly enough to restrict breathing.

_Phasse two, complete. Onward we march, towardss death or worsse, we know not where. _


	4. This Tainted Dream

**To those who are reading my other stories and possibly feeling impatient about the next updates, I'm sorry. These past two months have been rather eventful for me (arranging a new class schedule, playing host to guests, home remodeling, etc.)****, and writing for this story happens to be my current way of coping with it. When it's finished, the other works _will_ be resumed, I assure you, but until then, please, for the love of bees, I ask you to be patient. I don't want to turn out any chapters that don't hold your interest due to caving in to pressure.**

**DISCLAIMER: As usual, I own nothing of potential financial interest to Marvel or ancient Norse mythology, be it the phrases/paraphrases, characters, etc. used here.**

**WARNING: Some semi-graphic violence, foul language, gore and dark humor, and the Norse god of thunder, lightning, and fertility being about as understanding of his adopted sibling's situation and viewpoint as an impact with solid concrete after falling from the top floor of Stark Tower if there was no Iron Man suit for protection. **

**To clarify a question as to _how_, exactly, the symbiote and Loki are connected: they hold a deep-seated connection on a cellular level, allowing for the constant change in appearance, the extreme adaptations to allow the symbiote to both be housed in Loki's body and to heal and adapt said body for a quasi-"evolution" in overall strength, speed, ****defensive/offensive capabilities, etc. This type of symbiosis is, to me, a combination of both endosymbiosis (the symbiote lives within the tissues of the other in the relationship, such as in cells) and ****ectosymbiosis (the symbiote lives on the body surfaces of the other). ****They also hold a profound bond on an emotional and mental level, allowing for the shared mindset, speech pattern, and overall interdependence, possessiveness, and protectiveness. Lying, hiding, pretending are all impossible to do to the other; there's simply too much shared, and thus the fear of abandonment, misunderstanding, or distrust is, rather validly, nonexistent.**

_**That**_** is the relationship between them: pure, unadulterated understanding and connection, on every level you can name, be it cellular, psychological, mental, physical, or otherwise. They are two pieces of the same puzzle, two halves of a whole that combine and are one. Loki is the symbiote and the symbiote is Loki, and they are also their own individual person as well. That is why Loki can differentiate between himself and the symbiote, but uses the "we" term when addressing others.  
**

* * *

It had been some time since the Captain and the Man in the Iron suit (_Antony Sstark_, he was named, according to the memories Barton had of the man's file before this entire escapade even had begun) had congratulated each other on the ostensibly successful defeat and capture and taken their desired places on the Quinjet, and the two had since taken up staring at him as if studying a specimen under glass. The look would be almost sickening, if it weren't also so darkly amusing; if they peered any closer, the symbiote's dangerously simmering distrust would have a perfectly valid reason to explode, and then everyone else on what he already inwardly regarded as a flying death trap would _die. _

_If the man with the sshield leanss forwardss jusst a little bit-!_

_Now, now, all in good time. There will be plenty of people at their basse to eat, but if we eat thesse people **now**, there will be no one to fly the sship, and neither of uss know how to fly thiss particular piece of metal. We can wait a little longer, hmm? It'ss besst not to crassh into the city below uss, or posssibly the ocean by thiss continent. _

_...Jusst one bite? He hass sso much deliciouss meat on him..._

_Yess, but he will sscream, and that will **hurt** uss, remember? I thought you wanted ssilence after the metal-loving man over there played the terrible death to mussical culture._

_Sstill hungry, though._ The words were accompanied by what felt unmistakably like the mental equivalent of a rather impressive display of sulking. The concept of his other half engaging in a childish fit of pouting was quite amusing, he decided.

The air in the Quinjet felt clammy, pressing fingers of cold into the skin of those strapped in. Loki, who knew all too well that the cold would be of no bother to him, pointedly ignored the feeling and wondered vaguely how the retrieval of the iridium had progressed since the events at the gala.

_Perhapss he hass taken it back to basse already for preparationss._

The thought was somewhat mollifying, given the current circumstances. The handcuffs on his wrists were beginning to chafe, and he wasn't quite sure that vanishing them with his magic or letting the symbiote eat them for a quick morsel of food would be greeted with anything close to a favourable reaction. Stark, given the information gleaned from his personnel file, would likely see it as an act of pre-meditated offense and use it as an excuse for the operation of at least a few of the smaller of the dozens upon dozens of war machines hidden under the gaudy red and gold surface metal. Rogers may protest a bit out of principle, as his body language spoke of a strong moral code and an equally strong soldier's mindset, but the lady Romanov might deliberately overlook it, so long as it wasn't lethal.

There was a lot of pain that a person could inflict without killing the subject. Time and experience had long ago proven that.

A low crackling sound burbled out of the speakers on the redhead's headset, the same voice as the one-eyed man who he had fired at while in the desert. _Evidently her employer, then. The man Fury keepss a lot of tabss, it sseemss._

"Has he said anything yet, anything at all?"

"Not so much as a word, or even an exclamation. Maybe Stark intimidated him enough to shut him up with all those weapons in his suit."

"Well, just get him here. We're running low on time, and on fuel if this drags out much longer."

The sound abruptly cut off, as curtly as if the man in question had turned and walked away, and the air filled with an oppressive silence for a moment; on the other side of the Quinjet, Rogers and Stark continue to stare, muffled whispers traded every so often. Loki wondered if they even realized he could hear them.

"I don't like it, not one bit. This doesn't make any sense."

"What? Rock of Ages giving up so easily once I brought out some of the big guns?"

"Look, you weren't there very long, so you wouldn't get it, but I don't remember it being that easy a gig to pull off. This guy packs a heck of a wallop, he threw my shield clear across the park and gave me a hello in the form of a new bruise collection."

There was a derisive snort from the shorter male. "Look, I don't know if you realize it, but you're still pretty spry...for an older fellow, anyways. Point is, I _think_ you'll live. What's your thing for it? Pilates? Morning jog around the Pentagon? Competitive swim session with sharks?"

A brief look of confused surprise flickered across the deceptively youthful-looking visage. "...What? I don't-"

"Don't sweat it, it's all like calisthenics anyway. You might've missed a few things...or actually, maybe a lot of things, y'know, doing time as a Capsicle à la 'Murica."

The surprised expression morphed into disbelief, then a split second of righteous anger, and then finally settled into reluctant acceptance, a grin tugging at that smile-riddled mouth as a match was met in egocentricity.

"Fury didn't tell me that he was calling you in for backup."

The dark chocolate-coloured eyebrow raised in response appeared so natural it seemed to have been made for the pure purpose of aiding in the art of expressions of condescending acceptance. "Yeah, well, that's kind of to be expected. There's a lot of things that Fury doesn't tell you, he's always struck me as the kind of guy to have secrets soaked in secrets that are _boxed _in secrets, y'know?"

A shrug was given in response, the sort that showcased sheepishness and quiet, dismayed understanding. "Well, I guess it's a good thing you're here then, after all, huh?"

On the other side, Loki could only inwardly sigh at such a mawkish display. They had a prisoner _right in front of_ _them_ that was clearly listening and watching, and yet the open display of attachment was given out as freely as tavern mead after a prosperous hunt. Did they even _remember _that one of the first rules of war was never to display any potential weakness to your enemy?

_Too many ssacchirine emotionss for me, thank you. Pleasse divert your excesss dossage of ssentimentality to the next flight, and leave me to my planning in peace._

* * *

The reprieve from observing the humans came in the form of a deafening blast of thunder and lightning from outside; from the close sound of the auditory blast, a few bolts had nearly hit the Quinjet, thus causing the sudden round of violent shaking. Loki stared out of one of the aircraft's windows, noting a half-dozen surges of blinding white electrical threads the size of tree trunks, and shuddered, turning away to cast another silent muffling charm to cushion his much-abused shared eardrums from the sound. The symbiote quivered in place, mental waves of sickly grey-blue and coal-black crashing thoughts back and forth into an ugly, muddled ocean of tumultuous pain. The sensation caused a well of memory to awaken within, the still reverberating sound of thunder as familiar as his magic: he knew, as instinctively as taking in air after breaching the water's surface, what had caused that burst of celestial noise.

_Thor._

So, his not-brother had come down to Midgard to save the day and protect his human friends?

_Well, at the very leasst the Allfather iss not sso **entirely** fargone in wissdom that he ignored the enourmouss incoming invassion of inssectoid filth** entirely**. Nornss know that leaving another realm to fend for itsself and try and put up itss own defencess iss **completely** out of the quesstion, it'ss a **fantasstic** idea to ssend your battle-crazed firsstborn down to a world he only sspent three dayss on and expect him to insstantly connect with the local populace like old friendss of many centuriess, never mind the centuriess of playing follow the leader even when it getss people hurt, or killed, or worsse!_

A low groaning sound, much akin to that of an animal in intense pain, came flickering up from the back of their shared mind, cutting off the beginnings of what was, admittedly, a rather ugly rant; it appeared that the blast of outside sound was too painful to experience, and the symbiote had thus taken to hiding as much as possible until it was quiet again. A wave of empathy for his companion over their shared plight left him wondering how to crush the noise into so much molecular disarray and then blast it apart, to scatter it so far and wide that it would never reform and plague the eardrums of the living ever again.

_Hurtss, hurtss..._

_I know_, he soothed quietly, _jusst hold on for a sshort while longer. _A bit of magic was pulled forth to wrap the symbiote in a cocoon of mental waves of quiet, prompting a soft, rumbling _mrrrrr _of acceptance. He closed his eyes and willed the newly reawakened headache (now a proper migraine, he thought darkly) to vanish.

The thunder boomed again, roaring like a lion, and instinctively he flinched, catsuit rippling like a pond disturbed by a downpour of rainwater as the lights stuttered, flickering on and off for several seconds within the interior. Darkness, he remembered, did not foretell of safety, but of pain, of death, of destruction. The symbiote was the one and only exception: the darkness It had wrapped him in when It had healed him was _safe. _

Rogers, he noted with some irritation, was giving him a slightly muddled look, intermixing very, very slight concern (the fact that it was even there at all felt somewhat unnerving, but it was to be a given, he supposed, the man's morality shone through like an obnoxious beacon of light) with a properly methodical air, tinged with a touch of biting sarcasm (_that_ was acceptable, he could handle such forms of scrutiny, the man was only working according to his standard protocols). "What's the matter? You scared of a little bit of lightning?"

_Careful how you sspeak, the lightning you mock sso hass cleaved men in two, burned down foresstss, sshattered sskulls and burnt the enemy from the insside out like sso much overcooked meat, and, losst in the grip of itss blisstering power, __their blood boilss until their eyes bursst from the presssure that mountss within. Thiss force of nature could sshear you off the face of thiss world like a handful of dusst, I have sseen it sso before, and it iss not pleassant to watch._

But to state such unpleasant truths would only leave the humans with one less being to consider an ally, and given their current strategies, they might need more help than they already possess. So, quelling the urge to spit out the truth and watch the fear form on their frail young faces, he offered a rueful smile and chose a different set of words: still a truth, but not quite so bitter. He had grown more used to this one, having kept it upon his lips for what seemed too many years.

"We're not overly fond of what followss."

Up in the cockpit, Romanov was in the process of sending a message to S.H.I.E.L.D. about the current storm-plagued situation, all the while muttering questions as to the sudden strange phenomenon as she began the rather difficult process of steering the Quinjet out of the downpour. The sound was almost comforting, given that Stark had taken to playing _more _obnoxious music in the face of the storm, and Rogers was trying (a rather valiant, but futile effort, he noted) to get him to either silence it or turn it off.

A few moments of eye-watering light from the storm outside, and then the light from the windows of the Quinjet gained a promotion from eye-watering to the type of blinding normally reserved to those unlucky enough to be caught in the blast radius of a nearby nuclear explosion. The walls vibrated from the close proximity to the tumultuous force, and in an unexpected blessing, he noted that Stark's noisy music-dispensing equipment had shorted out.

_Well, at leasst that'ss one lesss thing to worry about._

The air inside was heating up, charged with energy from the debauchery of voltage outside, and every human on board had gained a new sheen of sweat. The symbiote was retreating inwards now, curling and uncurling in a fit of noise-induced anxiety around his ribcage, tendrils looping around the curve of each rib like braids of flickering galaxies in an effort at attempted stabilization. A segment of the shaking organism reached through the gap between each rib, widening and stretching Itself carefully to create a seamless transition between bone and intercostal muscles, forming an unbroken cocoon out of the area. After a few moments, a loud, throbbing noise became audible, pounding in his ears like the sound of drums, and with it, the realization that the symbiote was trying to block out the roar of thunder and lightning by amplifying the internal noise of their shared heartbeat.

Judging by the slow but definite relaxation of pressure on the rest of his insides, the somewhat unorthodox effort was working. _Ssmart move. At leasst thiss may delay the sshock in the next few momentss._

Another crashing echo of lightning clanged through the air like the blaring cry of a klaxon horn, and then the human occupants could only gape in abject shock as the back was all but entirely torn open by a pair of muscular hands. With the ramp forcibly opened up, a tall, imposing figure strode purposefully across the floor of the Quinjet, uncaring as to the water being dripped all over the surface, and reached out a tanned paw, the heat radiating from the skin a sharp contrast to the freezing deluge outside.

There was barely enough time to register the unsanctioned presence with a token look of shock before that huge hand made contact with his throat and _squeezed_; the symbiote reacted immediately, a cirrus of coal-black rearing up from the section of the catsuit covering the chest, the end of the makeshift appendage sprouting dozens of viciously sharp needles, and swung at the offending hand as if to break it into a mass of broken bones and meat on the spot. Mjolnir (still as ridiculously held as ever, he managed to note, an instrument of power held like a child's toy about to be thrown at someone's head at the slightest provocation) swung back in response, lightning crackling across the grey surface of the head, and the symbiote twisted around in place and let out a mental hiss, eyeing the offending piece of mythical metal warily. Even after being in the presence of the weaponized juggernaut for only a few seconds, It knew more than enough to understand that the super-heating weapon in the middle of the Quinjet posed a deadly threat if underestimated.

Dimly, in the background, Loki registered the sound coming from both of the humans on the other side of the Quinjet as shouting, though whether it was to object or encourage was rather difficult to discern, given that the pressure on his throat, while now gone, had temporarily cut off a much-needed oxygen supply and left in its wake a sensation of unpleasant, attention-demanding vertigo.

_Sstill ever the brute, I ssee. _The brief urge to rub the damaged skin and check for bruises was considered, then discarded. He had dealt with pain before, it would not do harm to ignore such a trivial injury for now.

But then the hand came back, this time covered in a rather impressive multitude of needle-thin bloody scratches and gouges across the knuckles, and he braced himself for another round of wooziness while the blonde fool remembered that he needed to _breathe. _The idiot wouldn't listen even at the best of scenarios, and if he fought back now of all times, the man might not even hesitate to strike him, either by Mjolnir or by his own gargantuan hands, and trying to direct an invasion while unconscious was _not _feasible.

This time the feeling of a spinning head could be anticipated, but was nonetheless unpleasant, as fingers pressed down into tormented flesh and gave a sharp yank, heedless of the needling segments of semi-fluid jabbing into slightly tanned flesh in an effort for immediate release. Within a split second, they're out of the aircraft and into the open air, now in the grasp of nighttime, and a faint sensation of panic built up as he realized that the Quinjet had gotten far enough on its journey that there was now an entirely different landscape underneath them: a large, imposing mountainside clad in deep green forestry and a plethora of rocks in varying shades of greys and whites.

Given their current speed, there can only be one, rather painful to consider, outcome to this impromptu flight.

_Damn._

The panic surged up again, raw and wild and desperate now, as Thor's grip abruptly vanished, replaced by the chilled, shredding sensation of the shrieking wind. Having nothing to cling to in order to impede or break the sudden launch through the air like an oversized discus, Loki could only muster a brief moment of concentration to force down the memories of falling before he braced himself for impact with the enourmous mass of solid, unforgiving rock. The symbiote's rage at the abrupt, careless toss of their shared person was shoved aside for worry and an instinctive act of bodily preservation: only a second after they're lobbed toward the mountain, and the suit covering was already warping, remodeling, adapting to cushion the fall, shield vital organs, and absorb the shock of impact. The god shut his eyes, offered what magic he could to add strength to the anatomical reinforcements, and held his breath to keep out any dirt or slag from the impending crash as the symbiote stretched over every inch of their vessel to upgrade from catsuit to full-body morphsuit.

There was a tremendous amount of sound generated when he finally did crash, and the pain it brings to his already-battered body left a distinctly sickly taste in his mouth. Loki wondered vaguely if the flavour originated from the presence of blood, from bile, or, quite possibly, both.

But getting up proved to be easier than anticipated once a mouthful of pink-tinged saliva had been spat out to soak into mountain dirt, and when a rapid damage check yielded no broken bones, large patches of torn away skin, or overly mangled organs, a bit of calm set in, as well as a wave of well-deserved gratitude for the symbiote's nimble reaction to their launch. By the time Thor landed in a whirl of scarlet and silver a few moments later, an escape route had been scouted out, and a spell cast to check if the humans in the Quinjet were close enough to follow.

_Hmm, it appearss we have an incoming human._

_The noissy one?_

_Yess, him. The one with the sshield iss ssome wayss away yet, but he will be here ssoon enough. _

The sight of Mjolnir pointed at him was not something worth being fazed about. The blue eyes that stared so bluntly at him, no affection or warmth clearly seen, however, was indeed a reason to wonder at. Perhaps the Allfather had told him more than was expected of the situation?

_An expresssion of cold ferocity doess not ssuit your vissage, Thor. What hass been sspun into wordss for ssuch a rough reunion? _

"Where is the Tesseract?"

_Aah, that explainss sso much. The Allfather doessn't care for the humanss on thiss rock, he wantss to enssure the ssafety of the Cossmic Cube. Nornss forbid there be any** other** reasson. What of your mortalss, hmm, what of your ssurveyor of the sstars, or her ever-prattling friend, or that sscientisst? You do not assk of them? You do not even assk of **me**? I wass dead, dead in your eyess, gone from your grip, losst in the Void, and yet there iss **no** other reaction?_

Before he could stop it, a laugh clawed its way free from his throat, the sound wild, sharp as broken glass, with a sable-tinged hint of bubbling hysteria and a creeping, burning pain from a place he cannot think to name. "Well, we misssed you _too_, if there'ss a care in you to take it."

The reaction was explosive: Thor's face darkened, his expression as stormy as his famed weather-changing capabilities. Overhead, the dark sky clamored with sound as clouds rolled back and forth, generating a slew of potential storms. "Do I _look _to be in a gaming mood with you!? You have gone and terrorized this realm for your own sick amusement!"

_The desstruction of one, and **only** one **ssecret** ressearch facility, a few converted agentss and their dead comradess even_ **_lessser _**_in number than that_,_ the procuring of one eyeball that would not even warrant a trip to a healer, and a loud, clearly overinflated sspeech in the local park, and ssomehow thiss equatess to generating the fear of an entire world? The Allfather'ss taless of conquesst told to uss in our youth held far more bloodsshed than **that**. _

"Oh, iss that _true_? You know, given that it'ss been sso difficult to pull off, you really ought to thank uss. With the BifFrosst sshattered and gone, how much dark energy did the Allfather have to musster to even conjure you here? Thiss little trip to your preciouss little world?"

The words feel heavy, bitter as a mouthful of milk thistle on his tongue as they spread out into the open air, every syllable ringing like a death toll. His hands, clenched to his sides in forced restraint, ache with phantom pain, and it takes a moment or so to resist the urge to curl slim fingers in the ghostly act of past motion, trying to clasp onto a hand that now looks far more likely to strike him down than pull him to safety.

Mjolnir dropped to the ground, the sound echoing across chasms of rock as it slammed into the dirt with a hard, blunt _thud _that shook the mountain into quaking like an unstable pile of leaves. Hands reached out, tan and lined and rough with the scars of a hundred thousand fierce battles, and the touch of warmth felt so strange, so unfamiliar after so long an absence that it _burned. _Loki struggled to resist the instinctive urge to pull away, memories of time before warring with the present, the heated skin feeling as if it would scorch him away entirely.

Too long had he burned away in the Void, too long had it been since those hands had been trustworthy. Even now, they had nearly choked him earlier, the fool using too much strength and not enough restraint. The only touch he could properly stand now was that of the grasp of the symbiote, the enigma of It which had pulled him free from pain and cold, that had healed him, that had kept him, that had _wanted _him. The shadows woven around his bones meant an entire universe of things too precious to limit to words.

"I thought you were gone, I thought you were _dead_." There's grief in the words, pure and sharp as a high note in an out of tune instrument, and it's almost worth the discomfort caused by the reunion embrace. Questions burned on the tip of his tongue, harsh and sour as lemon juice in an open wound; he doesn't want to speak them, to give voice to the ghosts that had tormented him in _their _hold.

But he needs, with a sickening amount of desperation, to _know. _

The first question was forced out, tearing upwards and out of fearful vocal cords. Twisting his words back to their old mannerisms was difficult, almost painful given the circumstances, but Thor had never been very strong in the art of understanding differences. If he tried to speak as he preferred to now, it would likely leave his not-brother wondering if he was suffering from some sort of ailment. "Did you...mourn me?"

"We all did, every last one. Our father..."

But Thor would not look him in the eye, and hope, frail and tiny as a newborn bird, withered away and died before it could first breathe air.

His not-brother had never been very good at the art of lying, not even when it was needed.

_Sso, that'ss it, then. No funeral pyre, no ssongss, not even the sstub of a candle lit, except perhapss in celebration of thiss body'ss untimely apparent demisse. Did you even **try **to find me, look for me in the dark, bring me back? Wass I to be given up sso eassily, casst away like a worn out cloak?_

The silence between them festered like an infected wound. The symbiote's disgust at the dark emotions rolling off the situation like cloying fumes felt heavy, a poison-maroon slow burning that rankled with Loki's own painful, mounting urge to scream in childish indignation. _Iss **thiss** what you call kindnesss, Thor? Thiss farce at comforting me that I wass not even worthy enough to be given the lasst ritess? Even the paltry dead of the impoverisshed earn ssuch thingss if they sslaughter even a dying enemy!__  
_

The answer he chose in response was harsh, admittedly, but the dark place in his heart that had grown in size with what he had just been told was a raging bonfire now, ignited and fanned into wickedly high flames by the eyes that would not meet his own, and so he pretended not to care.

"_Your_ father, not mine, _never _mine. He _did _tell you of my true parentage, did he not, in that all-knowing_ beneficence_ he holdss sso dearly in hand? Thiss damnable thing that sstandss here, thiss thing you are _cruel_ enough to claim a hint of relation to, even knowing sso?"

The taller god released his hold, the burning fire drifting away like the funeral pyre that had never even been constructed, and stared for a long, dark moment, as if he was looking at his adoptive sibling for the first time, and was not quite sure he liked what was glimpsed there. Hands extended in a blunt gesture of attempted conviction, the blue eyes almost frantic with the need to offer justifications, explanations, answers to shed light upon the widening chasm cast between them.

"It...It matters not, Loki. We were raised together, we played together, we fought together, always as family, always as brothers, side by side. Do you remember none of that, of those golden days united?"

_I remember being left behind and mocked becausse I wass not sstrong enough to play at being warriorss with you and your friendss. Why do you think I firsst began sseeking ssolace in the library, a place where I could learn without jabss at my ssmaller sstature, the inssultss that a king'ss sson could not posssibly be sso pathetic in comparisson to hiss older brother? You made a taunting ssport of my reading, and yet you never quesstioned where I learned of sso many of the sspells that kept you and your comradess alive on our quesstss!_

_I remember being jeered at in the training given in our youth becausse I had not the sstrength to throw a man from the ring without magic, and you called my sskillss nothing more than trickss when I had nothing elsse but my ever-ridiculed knivess to fight with and you had a force of nature sshackled to your every beck and call. _

_I remember Ssif'ss braying and ssnot-nossed crying when all I did wass turn her hair a different colour, sso that for once **I** wass not not the only one who looked different, and you all went mad about it like a pack of rabid wolvess sscenting a wounded buck! Your demandss for compenssation helped cosst me my wordss, Thor, and yet in the coming yearss you had the **gall** to wonder why I would not ssimply conjure up whatever you and your band of idiotss wanted on your journeyss, or why I refussed to come along like a good little hound to play fetch...!_

_Tell me, Thor, do you remember none of **that**?_

The air felt colder, more oppressive, digging in with minuscule claws of ice to try and wreak havoc on exposed flesh, but the lack of cold that he could feel hurt more. The symbiote coiled around It's host's spine like a snake guarding a clutch of eggs, cradling vertebrae and rubbing deep muscles in an internal massage, trying to alleviate some of the tension building up: every muscle Loki had felt like a coiled spring ready to snap, the bone-deep urge to scream unwanted, bitter, filthy truth in his not-brother's face churning like a sea of acid to rub the inside of his throat raw.

He forced himself to turn away. If he didn't, he knew there was no honest guarantee that Thor would come out of the situation with all of his limbs attached properly. The symbiote was incensed enough as it was.

"I remember...a sshadow," he forced out, bitter anger coating the words with a sickly shine of not-quite-silver, "I remember living...no, _exissting_...in the sshade of your greatnesss like ssome half-wilted plant denied proper ssunlight. I remember you, all but tosssing me into an abysss yoursself, you who left me to _die _at the bottom of the universse! _You _who let me fall into what wass _**worsse** _than death, and did _nothing _to mend it! I _wass _and _sshould _be king, by the right given by the Allmother _I_ held the throne, and then _you_ come gallivanting back with your little pet lapdogss, having learned and earned _nothing _becausse you _**losst nothing**! __You _had your weapon, _you _had help, _you _had friendss, alliess to clothe you, sshelter you, feed you, lissten to your neverending sstream of complaintss and bragging of adventuress you charged into like a taunted bilgessnipe. _You _took back what you were not worthy of, you took it like you take all thingss, and you _abandoned _me!"

The expression on Thor's face held both immense sadness, and confusion: honest, blunt, _pathetic _confusion, as pure and foolish as that of a child, and Loki knew in that moment that all hope of him understanding, if there even was any in the beginning, was to die here, in the mountains of a world fought over like a petty little trinket.

"So you take the world I love for your imagined slights, then? Do you think it a pretty bauble to add to your collection, is that it? No, the Earth is under my protection, Loki, and I will not step aside in that duty, not even to you. Stop before you damage too much."

_Imagined sslightss? **Imagined sslightss? **Are my yearss of pain nothing more than petty complaintss to you, Thor? A childissh tantrum to be thrown for my broken boness and my heart and hopess crusshed underfoot like sso many grainss of ssand for how many yearss? If our roless were reverssed, you would not claim it sso, you would proclaim that you had been wronged sso grievoussly that nothing but your every wissh fulfilled would sstem the pain of the emotional woundss. How can you posssibly sstand there, and sspeak ssuch thingss to me, knowing our hisstory and yet holding your head high like you know better than I do of the vile rancor borne of humiliation?_

The urge to scream had long since moved past bone-deep, and by now had reached atom-level indignity. He choked back it back, forcibly remolding it into a laugh. The effort hurt like breathing with bruised lungs. "And you're doing a _marvelouss _job of that, aren't you? Protecting them, helping them, guiding them? The humanss sslaughter each other in drovess every day, fighting over the dwindling ressourcess of their dying world, while _you_ idly threaten from atop a lofty golden balcony with a mug of mead in one hand. I mean to rule them, unite them under a banner of glory. And, truly, why sshould I _not? _Many of the landss of thiss realm are sso unsstable that unition may heal their fracturess and offer a gift of peace."

The thunder god stared at him, eyes darkened from sky-blue to a stormy grey-cobalt that had foreshadowed since youth of mounting rage. "So, you think yourself above them, then?" The smile on his face was cold, grim as a corpse, full of reluctant thoughts.

"Well, yess." It wasn't a lie. He could, and would, admit that much. But how was the man before him to know just _what _he meant by those two words? How was he to understand the abject grudging admiration held by that which lived above, that spark of reluctant respect concerning the never-ending toil of life performed by those that scampered and scuttled and scurried below? How could he comprehend the fascination held for a life that had to struggle for every morsel of food, every sip of drink, every scrap of warmth and affection, or a roof without holes overhead?

He had been given such luxuries since birth, having accepted them long ago as too commonplace to bear sparing thought for. Even here, on this world he so loudly proclaimed to have under his protection, Thor had been sheltered from the worst of humanity's offerings, having been taken in, given garments to wear, fresh food to eat, friends to talk with, and a way to defend himself never truly far away. He had not had to worry about how to procure his next meal, or a place to sleep in warmth and safety, or someone to help him when he inevitably did something foolish that left everyone in the blast radius scrambling for cover from the fallout. Three days of relative wealth, and he thought he understood the common man of this world?

The very idea was so pathetic it was almost laughable.

_You want to play the hero, the beacon of good thwarting the dark little sshade here, don't you? Truly, you have no idea how much you have been protected. You're a boy playing at being a king, and unlike me, you can't hope to fail, it issn't in you to think of anything elsse, much lesss a backup plan._

Thor stared back at him, eyes full of what was unmistakably both pity and a faint sense of righteousness borne from the belief of justification. "Then, regrettably, you miss the truth of ruling, brother. A throne would suit you quite ill, if all you can think of is how high it puts you upwards from those who must call you king."

At this, something in him snapped, weighted down by too many insults compiled over the years, and he shoved at Thor, shunting him to the side as the smouldering coals of rage were rekindled. Walking to the ledge, he prayed inwardly that the thunder god did not come closer; he was liable to lash out as it was, and Thor's stoking of old flames of dark emotion had left him suddenly too closely confined in his shared body, wound deeply as a Valkyrie's favoured intricate braids. The symbiote was a rumbling mass of knife-sharp animosity, wrapped so securely around his insides that if Loki did not cling to the clarity and fierce support the embrace's aching sensation gave him, he might have collapsed. But It knew him, and gripped him all the more tightly; there would be no benefit to fly apart at the seams, not here, not now in this moment when the world hinged on two men locked on opposite paths.

It's too late, far too late for everything, truthfully, to change things. He wasn't sure he would ever know if this is, was, or ever _will_ be repairable, or, if so, to what degree. The battlefield had been set before Thor came to Midgard, and the game needed to be adjusted for his presence.

_A lie, then? A half-lie? _Plain, unaltered truth would not be accepted from this mouth, not even from the one before him. But something had to be said, so he took the words threatening to leap out and burn Thor to nothing but ash, and traded incantations for a reformed lie.

"I've sseen worldss you've never even _known _about, not even an inkling of! I have changed, I have _grown_, Odinsson, in _my_ exile! I have sseen the true power of the Tessseract, bright and gloriouss, and when I wield it..."

The expression on Thor's face grew wary, suspicious. _Good, about time he finally began wondering where all of thiss comess sspouting from._

"Loki...who showed you this power? Who controls the would-be-king of this realm?"

_A lunatic who dessiress the decaying hand of Death in unholy union, you overbearing ignoramuss. _Unfortunately, he doubted that his not-brother would have knowledge of the Mad Titan, or his associates. Such a thing would likely be too much for the battle-prone firstborn prince to take in, given that it did not involve immediate gratification as an attachment.

A slight mental nudge from the symbiote alerted him to the fact that Thor was still awaiting an answer. The words that rose up in reply felt instinctive, fueled by old pains, but time had worn them down until they were only half-lie: bruising, but not breaking, though giving them audible form carved an ache into his throat. "I _am_ a king! There iss no _potential_, Thor, no falsse promisse of a throne that wass alwayss meant for another."

But the blue eyes remain closed to understanding, and he was loathe to see it. _Here I sstand before you, proclaiming more truthss on foreign ssoil in mere hourss than I did in a hundred yearss of our ssuppossed home, and yet you **sstill **can ssee nothing. How far, indeed, have I fallen, to bear witnesss to thiss mockery of my persson by the one who callss himsself my kin? __  
_

"No, _not_ here. This is insanity that speaks before me, not you! You give up the Tesseract, you give up this poisonous dream, lay down your hatefully-acquired arms! You come _home_, back to us, Loki. Please."

The irony of the situation was not lost on him: too many times to feasibly count, he had tried to convince Thor not to go and do something he had thought to be irreparable, too mad to consider a proper plan of action. It was almost sickening, the feeling of cold satisfaction that oozed from the old wounds of his oft-ignored spirit like the biological cleansing attempt done to destroy invading cells.

But said irony provided him with a rather cruelly made reward, and thus had to be repaid. Pulling the words free, he spoke up, eager to rid himself of the bitter aftertaste of something that isn't quite even a half-lie. "I don't have it-"

_At leasst, not on thiss persson. Mad? Yess. Foolissh? Not quite. _

Thunder rumbled ominously overhead; he was running out of time to speak. "_You _need the Cube to bring me back, but I've ssent it off. I know not where it iss now, it'ss gone, gone, _gone_." A laugh tore its way out of his throat, half of it bitter triumph, half of it the sickly sweet breakage of what he refused on principle to call a heart.

When he offered no further answer, something in Thor's expression snapped, patience finally worn thin, and he lunged forward, Mjolnir back in one hand and ready to swing forward to inflict what promised to be a breathtakingly _brutal _amount of pain. The symbiote warped, tens of thousands of needles rippling into place outside as the tendrils inside of their combined flesh wrapped around organs, bones, and tissues to form an internal aegis of protection. Claw tips lengthened into lean curves, sharpening for slicing and gouging. Senses heightened, every crackle of lightning above and every shift in movement suddenly eerily perceptible.

_Fight?_

_It sseemss we have no other choice in the matter. He'ss too sstubborn to lissten to me, and I doubt he will lissten to you either._

_Will he lissten if we try to eat the hammer?_

_No, I think that would only make him angrier. _

A bone-shattering hex flared up into sanguine shards in one hand, one of the last he could conjure before the low magical reserves could no longer be safely ignored, and he braced himself. _Thiss iss to be a proper battle, then, hmm? Sso be it. __  
_

"Enough of this! You listen well, brother, for I-"

_How can I lissten while you sswing Mjolnir around your head, you sseem far too likely to lassh out with it!_

But, almost miraculously, the beginnings of what would have been a long, futile lecture were abruptly cut off: Stark, it seemed, had finally managed to arrive, and had made a rather impressive introduction of himself by tackling the thunder god in mid-flight, knocking him off the mountain into the sea of trees below.

Peering over the edge, Loki allowed the hex to dissipate, pulling the energy back into his body for later use. "Well, Thor, I'm_ lisstening_."

A scrying spell was cast for a better view, and, judging by the sight of tree trunks snapping into pieces down the mountainside, he could only assume he would not get a proper reply for some time. _Aah, well. We tried._


	5. An Unstable Desire

**NOTE: When the story is told from Loki's perspective, all humans are referred to by their surnames and/or physical descriptions. In the moments _not _told directly from Loki's perspective, they will be referred to by their first or full names, physical descriptions, and/or rankings.**

**NOTE #2: The surveillance room's portion of conversation concerning Iridium and its potentially terrifying capabilities in the thermonuclear astrophysics field, and ****Tony, Steve, and Bruce's conversation in the Helicarrier Lab (or rather, Bruce's lab, given that he and Tony seem to be only ones who actually use it), as well as Steve's leaving the room to walk off and discover a casement of Hydra weaponry, and ****the scene with Dr. Selvig and the other "liberated" S.H.I.E.L.D. agents in the van with the Iridium being accepted into the CMS device, all ****occurred just as they did in the film, save for a touch more unease regarding "Mr. I've-got-a-bag-of-cats-for-brains".**

**NOTE #3: Yes, the man playing _Galaga_ still gets to play _Galaga_. I found that too strangely amusing in the film to change it XD**

**Also, I will be on a trip up north with family for the next few weeks, so part 6 will likely be put up some time in August.**

**DISCLAIMER: As usual, I own nothing potentially financially valuable to either the universes of _Marvel _or in Norse mythology, be it characters, gods, supposedly mythical creatures, phrases/paraphrases, etc. **

**WARNING: Some semi-graphic violence, foul language, gore and dark humor, and the rather unpleasant threat of bones, tissues, and organs collapsing and liquefying upon a short, terrifying drop from the air, to thousands of feet down into the ocean. **

* * *

Within only a short time after Stark had arrived and given Thor a rather amusing tackle off the mountainside, it became glaringly obvious that, in the distance, the tiny red, white, and blue dot was an incoming Rogers dropping in via patriotic parachute. Loki wondered if the man even realized that, judging by the size of the expanse of material, said parachute would likely get ensnared in the topmost branches of more than a few of what seemed to be an endless supply of trees, and he would end up in a tangled jumble.

_Iss the sshield with him?_

_Yess, but could you try and eat it later insstead? Thiss fight will require it of him, if he'ss to aid Sstark. _

_Will it help uss?_

_Yess._

_...Fine. Later, though, promisse?_

_Promisse. _

Humans still held a rather regressive drawback concerning how fragile their bodies were, and as getting struck by Thor's hammer or his lightning had taken down everything from dragons to bilgesnipes to Loki himself, given the supercharged potential for damage, it would likely be safer if the Captain had at least _some _form of defense. The Super serum might give him increased strength and healing (if the personnel file was to be believed), but electrocution was still a rather glaring obstacle to staying alive.

The fight itself, or what was visible of it from his scrying spell, ended rather too soon for his liking (although watching Thor inadvertently replenishing Stark's metal suit with power was rather amusing, not to mention the blast to the face and the headbutt that followed soon after), and as testament to the rather impressive display to testosterone-fueled combat, there were now several new holes in the mountainside, the ground was torn up as if a meteor had crashed, and the forest had now lost roughly a mile due to his not-brother bringing Mjolnir down upon Roger's shield and causing both lightning and vibranium to react and form a rather extensive shock wave crackling with light and sound, rather like the detonation of a small bomb.

Knowing now from experience that the incoming noise and heat from the blast could hurt to a truly appalling degree, he'd seized the opportunity provided by being fought over to take cover further up, scrape together what dregs remained of his scant magical reserves for a silencing spell, and ask a rather important question that had occurred to him after the unsavoury introduction to heavy metal in Stuttgart.

_You and I sshare the ssame body, every lasst molecule of it, yess? _

_Yess. But why quesstion thiss?_

_In the yearss before I met you, when I lived...elssewhere, there wass a place in my dwelling where I learned much, and among thosse thingss I found a collection of bookss full of information on medicine and anatomy, gleaned from the corpssess of the enemiess that fell to the kingdom'ss power. Ssince the revelation of my...heritage, I am unssure if thiss would work, but if it doess, we would have a way to sstop having to endure the pain of the ceasselesss caterwauling of thiss realm._

_...No more hurting? No more pain from sstupid noissess?_

_If it workss, then we can lissten any way we pleasse._

_What do we have to do?_

_I cannot do thiss on my own, my magic resservess are too low to do much more than a few more ssilencing sspellss for later, but you, however, can do exactly what we need._

_What iss it?_

The sound of heavy feet approached in the distance; when the footfalls became audible as the rapid, unified pace of a group rather than individual opponents, the symbiote's input of neon-yellow wariness led them both to decide that it was best to cut the conversation short for now. _I'll explain once we're aboard their primary aircraft, it will give uss a chance to tesst it. For now, perhapss it'ss besst for uss to be ssilent, Thor already iss angered enough to lassh out at the nearesst available target._

When the humans and his not-brother finally arrived at the scene, Loki felt a distinct level of pride in the knowledge that the mere act of reclining against the nearest chunk of rock and smirking left such blatantly uneasy expressions.

_An unlikely unisson againsst the common enemy, hmm? _

* * *

The Helicarrier was smaller on the inside than he had expected, given its rather intimidating external size. Every agent that scurried to and fro appeared to share the same facial expression of exhausted apprehension, sporting tightly shut mouths and dark-ringed eyes, occasionally bumping into either one of their comrades, or one of the walls that squeezed the narrow hallways together. Lighting was a not quite blinding neon white, burning away in glass bulbs and round sunken caverns in the ceiling overhead. The stench of sweat, metal, and old coffee burned through the air.

Having been rightfully deemed too dangerous to be left with such an obvious combative aid, he had been stripped of the scepter before entry to the aircraft; the weapon had been taken with shaking hands by a wide-eyed lab worker who had managed, rather admirably, to maintain a level of dignity until the symbiote relinquished It's hold, pouring Itself off the glowing rod to reach out and re-assimilate with It's host's body covering in what appeared rather frighteningly to be a sped up act of the process of dissolving into a black pool of tar, then surging forwards and melting seamlessly against the body in front of It. At that point, the human lost all manner of composure, turning the colour of chalk, then milk as he shakily backed away and went to turn in the lethal weapon to his superiors.

The smile such an act of fright evoked had earned him several worried expressions from those around him, but that was of no consequence.

New handcuffs had been procured and applied, and, to his irritation, they chafed even more than the last pair, rubbing the skin of his wrists until he felt certain that if the metal was pulled away, a good portion of skin would be torn off with it, leaving nothing but raw flesh behind. The symbiote had offered to wedge a few tendrils of Itself under the connected rings and flatten out as a cushioning barrier, but he had mentally declined, knowing that if his other half made a movement of _any_ kind at this time, the dozens of S.H.I.E.L.D. enforcers that surrounded them as an emergency escort would view it as an attack. Rogers would have undoubtedly debriefed his superiors of the more destructive capabilities he had been gifted with by his bond with the symbiote, and if those in charge had so much as an ounce of working brain matter between them, they would not take such information on the enemy lightly.

He didn't want to put It in danger on his behalf for something as benign as an act of kindness.

So he ignored the urge to claw or vanish the offending bindings off, and walked with his head high. The manacles, albeit with difficulty, could be ignored; he had gotten aboard as he had wanted, and no amount of shackles and fetters would deter him proceeding with the game.

After a moment of concentration, the chattering of the humans around him faded away, replaced by the quiet, mercifully familiar sloshing and rippling of the symbiote's movements within, the habitual infusion of Itself to damaged tissue to mend and adjust now both an emotional anodyne and a welcome action after the earlier impact with the mountain. Despite the lack of extreme physical damage that had been prevented, the symbiote's repair of their shared vessel of even trivial injuries left a warm, soothing sensation of mutual peace and importance, something he was all too grateful for.

Aboard the Helicarrier, such a luxury would, quite doubtlessly, be the only balm he would receive for pain. Interrogation, he knew, would not be without its darkness. He was not a native of this world, nor part of their own kind, and the damage, collateral and otherwise, that had been caused since his arrival had left a sharp, blistering impact as to whether or not he could ever be regarded as a "friendly" extraterrestrial life form.

The collective noise of the humans milling through the halls grew softer during the journey through the winding passages, and after a while, the Helicarrier Lab came into view, glowing with light and filled with dozens of intricate-looking pieces of equipment and several long tables covered with stacks of papers, notes, and the occasional mug wafting steam from what he could only assume, based on the drinks quaffed in his base, was a rather strong brew of coffee, possibly laced with alcohol for additional measure. A lone table up front, haloed by a terrifyingly beautiful neon glow, held the Chitauri scepter on an observational stand; the man behind the table was peering at it curiously, a handful of papers covered in messy-looking handwriting next to the pen gripped in one large hand, poised for additional notes.

_Aah, sso **that'ss** the good doctor Bruce Banner, then. _The file kept on this human was quite extensive, according to Barton's recollection, and with valid reason. Property damage, multiple casualties, destruction of military vehicles and equipment...the man must indeed be quite important to this operation, if they were willing to overlook such issues in order to gain his cooperation aboard while knowing so much as a single fit of rage could bring the entire aircraft plummeting like a bird shot down to be eaten for supper.

_Lotss of bad luck with the green sside, yess? No full acceptance. Too much imbalance. _The observation was innocent enough, but with a hint of grey-tinged sadness. Loki felt a wave of quiet fondness surge up to embrace the symbiote, warming and reassuring.

_Not everyone iss fortunate to find ssuch undersstanding. Compared to the difficultiess reported, we sseem quite blesssed. You and I enjoy thiss union, he hass had a hisstory of ssuffering and desstruction brought on by hiss own._

Pressure flickered both internally and externally in response, the peculiar yet comforting sensation of a hug both inwards and outwards as soft as a nest of warm blankets in dark winter. He took a second to enjoy the embrace.

The blunt, cold pressure of a gun being held to his back by the nearest S.H.I.E.L.D. officer dragged him back to the situation: Banner had stooped working on the scepter, though it seemed uncertain whether it was because he had gotten distracted by the parade of officers and one (or two, though Loki doubted they fully knew that) apparent maniacal prisoner, or because he genuinely could not figure out how it truly worked. Instead, the man was looking right at him through the slats of the observation window, eyeglasses in one hand and a look of confusion on the weary features as he rubbed the back of his head.

Knowing that this would likely be his only available opportunity to do so, Loki wondered if he should take the chance to cause further unease. A friendly nod of acknowledgement, perhaps? A nerve-jangling leer of a smile? A chuckle too carefree for the circumstances of a shackled enemy?

As it turned out, choosing to do all three left a rather interesting expression on the man's visage, a look that said that he clearly felt uncomfortable with such close scrutiny and very much wanted to be ignored, rather than be given the sort of cold smile most commonly found upon one who left to rot for so long that there was nothing remaining but a dead, unnerving grin left upon the wasted skull.

The inappropriate sense of childish accomplishment was a bright spot of blatantly rude hilarity, as well as a rather appealing award in the face of the sharp jab in the back with the gun from earlier as he continued the dreary journey further into the depths of the aircraft.

* * *

The air was colder here, drawing mist-like breath from the lips of the humans; evidently, the Detention Section of the aircraft was too far inward to get the creature comforts of proper heating put into place. But the lower temperature would not be of importance, so he ignored the shivers racking the bodies around him as the place of would-be containment came into view: a large, round cage of glass, the walls at least a foot thick, and ringed by reinforced metal pillars. Judging by the size, the hydraulic rigs were to keep the cage stabilized while the Helicarrier was in motion.

A few buttons were pressed alongside a series of levers on a raised podium to the side of the bizarre prison. The primary front panel of glass abruptly slid to the side, the movement as seamless as the flow of water downstream, to reveal a broad entryway into the glorified container. The nearest officer promptly gave him a hard shove into the cell, barely managing to step back in time to prevent sudden impalement by the symbiote's unhappy responding flare of jagged projections from the surface of the catsuit, sharp as broken glass and glistening ominously.

To his grudging respect, at the very least they had the sense to keep the handcuffs on, though the idea of keeping the offending bits of metal on for any longer than necessary left a sour taste in his mouth.

_No matter, we can dissposse of them ssoon enough. _The symbiote rumbled a low growl of agreement, disgruntled streaks of darkening reddish-orange flaring up at the sore, aching feeling of the skin beneath the restraints.

A few moments passed in silence as the S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel filed out of the room, and he used the time to survey his new place of confinement, trailing long fingers across the glass as feet tapped and paced across the floor.

_Hmm, the entry door openss and clossess upon the command of the control panel outsside, and there appearss to be ssome ssort of hollow sspace underneath the floor here, an extra sstorage room underneath into which to drop the imprissoned and then deplete air for a torture processs, perhapss? The full view provided by the glasss givess no privacy, and may be to fosster a ssensse of clausstrophobia for keeping anyone imprissoned in an unnerved sstate; they could not plan properly without being noticed._

The prison was not built for him, of that Loki was certain. If it was built with _him_ in mind as the original intended prisoner, there would be an excessive amount of magic-suppressants on every inch of the enclosure, and the strongest truth serum available forced down his throat before he stepped so much as an inch through the doorway. There would be bindings to keep him from moving without permission, and something to keep him from talking, for fear that he would somehow lie or charm his way out.

_Oh yess, thiss iss an ill-fitting prisson **indeed**..._

A low, guttural half-choking sound drew his attention forcibly away from continuing to examine his new place of confinement: one human had not left the room as his fellows had, and the single visible eye glaring coldly at him was easily recognizable. A single thick finger rested casually against the surface of one of the buttons on the control panel, ready to press down and unleash Norns knew what perceived horror upon the slightest sign of movement, hostile or otherwise.

"Just so you know, it case it's unclear to your damn lunatic mind, this box is going to be home sweet home from now on until I figure out exactly what to zap your stupid ass with. So if you try to escape, if you so much as put a _single_ scratch on that glass..."

The button was pushed down, and an eerie whistling sound could be heard below; Loki peered through the glass at the panel for a moment, before directing his gaze downwards as much as possible, but the floor was still sound beneath his feet. A silent spell to peer through the surface to the hollow space below proved rather unpleasant: the sight was of the open hatch below the cage, a gaping maw of emptiness from which the shriek of wind billowed, harsh and high as a vengeful spirit, and the scent of salt wafted upwards like the rotting stench of fallen foes. Far, far below, the ocean raged in a tumultuous soup of greyish-blue waves, deep cobalt boiling and rolling under the surface in great undulating pulses like the beating of some unnatural organ long since expected to expire.

An instinctive step backwards from the would-be precarious area left echoes clanging inside the cage, and he cursed inwardly at the sound, forcing down the unpleasant sensation of bile creeping up his throat at the sickening appearance of the water thousands of feet down below. The wind flickered suddenly in his ears, a hiss of sea salt that reached down and tugged cruelly at the base of a fear rooted in the forceful imposition of the power of gravity, and he crushed the unthinking, panic-borne urge to cry out.

But he thought that perhaps, just perhaps, a bit of leeway could be given to him. Ultimately, time and experience had taught him that good fortune did not smile upon him in regards to the act of falling.

Fury gave a look of grim satisfaction at the sight of the quiet, statue-still form in the cell, pointing to the control panel once more. "Thirty thousand feet down to hell, straight down in a steel trap to wrap everything up real neat and pretty. You get how that works, then?"

A flick of a finger, and the hatch closed up again. The digit pointed at Loki, and the god wondered if the human knew how rude that was.

"Ant."

The finger moved back, now pointing at the button to open the hatch that would drop anyone in the cage into the trap below.

"Boot."

Each of the words held a distinctly mocking edge, and he knew it was done purposefully. The thought was both amusing and irritating all at once. _How very juvenile._

But he could not help smirking, all the same; playing nonchalant, even relaxed, in the face of such an obvious measure of control would serve to both annoy and unnerve all at once, and such a statement would also work as a worthy distraction from his brief slippage in self-control. Slipping back into his new speech patterns, he tested the distant sense of relief that the return to newly forged words offered. "An impresssive feat of dessign for a cage, we musst admit. But not built, we think, with _uss_ in mind." _  
_

"You want a gold star for that little statement there? This was built for something a hell of a lot stronger than you in it, but beggars can't be choosers."

The symbiote's mental hiss of rage at the casual, purposely callous dismissal burned with sparks of raging scarlet, threatening to ignite into an inferno of wrath.

_Foolissh human mockss uss sso, we will crussh your sskull and leech out your eye, force it down your throat and watch you choke-!_

_There iss no point to wassting your energy on inssulting one who cannot even realize they are being inssulted. He cannot hear your voice, he lackss the ability. _

_Can we eat him later?_

The dark look of gloating satisfaction in the visible eye was incentive enough to make him pause for thought and consider the idea.

_...When we leave here, if we encounter him, then why not? A full meal would do uss a good sservice. But it will not be eassy, I warn you. _

A pulse of fiery golden acquiescence sealed the deal, and he settled back against the glass of the cage, meeting Fury's gaze levelly as a smirk danced into place across his lips, an answer pressing a mouthful of words forth. "Oh, we'd _heard_."

The camera in the upper ceiling corner, he noticed, moved ever so slightly at the words, the action seeming almost accidental. _Aah, ever the watcher, thesse people. Little metal verssionss of Heimdall to plague thiss room with, then? _

Turning his gaze upward, he looked directly into the camera, letting the too-wide smirk stretch across his visage as eyes flickered with pinpricks of oily sable, pupils thinning and shrinking to thin, feline slices to maximize the unnerving effect. A few seconds to let the image sink in, and he began to speak again, taking care to lean forward to help carry the sound._**  
**_

_Time to tesst out how far I can pussh them again. The pot can only hold sso much water before boiling over, after all. _

"The mindlesss beasst, making play that it'ss sstill a man. A man far out of hiss time of originss, far from home and family once known. A weaponss dealer who wanderss about thiss airsship in a walking armory. And to think, that'ss only about _half_ of them, if not accounting for your sspider and the firsstborn fool too. Jusst how frightened, how worried, how very dessperate _are _you, that you call upon ssuch losst creaturess to defend you?"

Somewhat unfortunately, Fury seemed immune to the eerie expression. "How desperate am _I_? Let me explain to you, here and now, just how desperate I am. You come here, threatening my world with war, take those under my command like they're nothing but toys, you steal a force you can't even hope to _try _and control! And you have the balls to ask me just _how desperate I am_?"

He turned and paced before the cage, eye narrowed in an expression of frigid immobility. "You, little shit that you are, are a walking contradiction. You talk about peace, and yet you kill cause it's _fun. _You have made me very, very desperate, and desperation makes humans do really crazy things. Do try to remember that, because you might not be glad that you did this, and I'm not here to just explain why you messed up."

Loki took a moment to take in the worlds, a reply formulating itself upon his tongue even as the symbiote's mental hiss of rage left jagged sprays of scarlet bleeding through the mindscape like a fresh dose of spilt blood. Another moment was taken to ensure the reply was as purposely rude as he could make it, as conversing with the man was terribly _boring_. He had far worse threats hanging overhead by his employer; the implication of future pain from the human before him was nothing in comparison.

_I am under threat of death and much, much worsse already. You think your petty threatss of torture can posssibly match up to ssuch grissly promissess from _**_him_**_? There iss no pain you can inflict upon thiss body that hass not already been performed until it hass been perfected for agoniess unknown before. _

"Ooh, how quaint, you're _angry_. It burnss you, doessn't it? It hurtss to have come sso very, very _closse. _To have the Tessseract, to have ssuch power, unlimited and steady power, and bound to none but your own kind. And for what? A warm light for all of mankind to sshare, and then to have been sso rudely reminded of what _real _power iss. We think it rankless ssomething fierce, doessn't it?"

The smile he was given in reply was somewhat strange, but the bitter cold hidden behind it was a sign of good progress, Loki decided. _Now if only we knew which button to presss to make it manifesst into proper rage..._

"Well, let me know if Real Power wants a magazine or something, hmm?" The words were mocking in their odd semblance of friendly banter, but perhaps that was to be expected.

Fury turned and walked out, leaving the room silent once more. Loki turned and looked back at the camera, letting another unnerving smirk flicker and then vanish across his face.

_That went rather well, I think. _

* * *

The Debriefing room seemed altogether too small as silence pressed down, heavy and suffocating. Somewhere in the distance, the sound of typing could be heard from a laptop, stilted and hesitant, as if afraid to break the imposing veil of quiet.

Thor, who had refused to even look at the view of the cage provided by the camera, stood in a daze, a look of stunned incomprehension on his face. Mjolnir's handle was gripped hard in one large hand, the leather visibly darkening from the strain being forced upon it from the pressure of the thunder god's fingers. Steve looked at the monitor, watching in silence until the screen turned black.

"Well, that was...interesting. He really grows on you, doesn't he?"

The words were joking, a jest done to alleviate the tension suddenly threatening to crush the room, but Steve gratefully seized the opportunity to speak, wanting to drive out the unpleasant silence.

"Yeah, like a damn bacterial infection. Loki's gonna drag this out, and he'll do it until we all crack from the suspense. That's not an option here. So, Thor, what's his play? Any ideas why he's doing this?"

A few moments passed as Thor visibly came back to the current situation, the shaggy golden mane swishing back and forth as he shook his head to clear away any lingering thoughts. "He...Loki has an army in his control, a race of beings called the Chitauri. I know not where he got them, as they are not of Asgard, or even of any world known to me. He means to lead them into battle against your people, to raze, to raid, or to rule, I am unsure which. They will win him your...Earth, in return, I suspect, for the Tesseract."

The somewhat incredulous look that he received in turn was, though irritating, to be expected. "An army? An army from outer space, as in..._actual_ outer space?"

Bruce gave a curt nod, turning to offer his own input to the conversation. "So he must be building another portal, then. A way to let them travel here. That's what he must need Erik Selvig for, he understands the physics required for wormholes."

Thor blinked, a look of confusion flickering across the blue eyes. "Selvig, you say?"

"Mhmm, that's the one. He's an astrophysicist we called in to work on the Tesseract...that is, before your crazy brother went and stole both of them."

A smile broke out on the tanned visage, the first proper one since arriving on this grim errand. "A friend as well, in my case."

The low sound of a throat being cleared brought the moment of peace to a screeching halt. "Well, friend or not, he's not on our side right now. Loki's got him under some kind of brainwashing spell, along with...another one of ours."

"Well, what I'd like to know is why Loki even let us take him in. He's certainly not leading an army from in here, he's stuck in a cell with no way out but a close up meeting with the cold, dark ocean."

Dark brown eyes narrowed, brow furrowing in concentration as thoughts were pondered and discarded. "Really, I don't think we should be focusing on Loki too much. The guy's not exactly mentally stable, his brain's like a bagful of wet cats, all chaos and rage. You could _smell _the crazy on him when Fury talked to him."

At this, Thor seemed to rouse himself once more, eyes narrowing slightly in the beginning stirs of anger. "Take a care how you speak. Loki is beyond reason, though I do not yet know why, but he _is _of Asgard, and my brother besides."

The various looks of pitying scorn on the people around him spoke volumes otherwise. "Thor, he killed eighty people in two days, stole over a dozen S.H.I.E.L.D. vehicles and personnel, and made German headlines with that little eye-snatching and population subjugation stunt he pulled back in Germany."

Thick blonde eyebrows furrowed in confusion at the statement. "He's adopted," Thor offered in reply, is if that would explain everything.

Perhaps, to him, it did, although it was difficult to understand whether he found the kill count shamefully low, or horrifying.

Shaking his head at the abject loss of understanding, Steve turned to the other people in the room and began steering the conversation to the subject of Iridium.

* * *

It had been some time since he had been left to his own devices, though for how long, Loki was uncertain. There was no way to visibly tell time in this place, given the lack of visible timekeeping devices, windows opening to the outside world, or a known schedule.

Despite his reluctance to let his guard down, the events of the past few days had been too taxing to ignore without consequences to health and awareness, and after a few hours of pacing back and forth in the cell with no human company but the presence of the camera, he had been forced to acknowledge, even if only inwardly to the symbiote, that the demands of their shared vessel required a proper amount of sleep. Scrounging together what remained of his magic, he wove a handful of warding spells together to render the inside of the cell blanketed in silence, the encircling wall now projecting a false image of a still pacing, angered prisoner.

The symbiote warbled softly, pale blue whorls of thought whirling with exhaustion. _Ssleep ssoon?_

_Yess, ssleep now, in fact. We might be able to catch a few hourss of resst, if we keep the wardss in place until the humanss return. _

A low grumble of acquiescence, and the symbiote quieted, pressing in closer to pool against shared skin, the lukewarm, silken form flowing around the lean body to trap in what meagre heat was afforded in the glass cage. Loki settled down upon the cold floor, testing the surface once more for touch-activated traps. The hollow space below the floor was still sickeningly present as he examined the deceptively stable-looking surface, and he forced away the wave of nausea that rolled up like poisoned wine as earlier memories of the water far below resurfaced.

_No resst will be gotten while upon thiss floor. _

Looking up at the ceiling, an idea flickered to life, a soft candlelight of thought in the dark claustrophobia of the see-through prison. _Perhapss we were looking in the wrong place for ssomewhere to resst thiss head?_

The symbiote regarded the empty stretch of space up above, mapping out the seams dividing ceiling from encircling wall. _We need a bed. _

Loki held out his hands, palms facing upwards and already sparking with magic; even with magic reserves dwindled to almost nothing, the sacrifice would serve a purpose in giving the first peaceful sleep since they had arrived upon this world. They were both so very, very tired...

A moment passed, and he refused to acknowledge the faint sparks of alarm when his hands shook from the strain of being held in place without the support of something to grip. Had they truly gone without respite for so long? Surely the food obtained from Stuttgart had staved off at least a small bit of this physical weakening?

_No, it iss only a moment of weaknesss. It will passs. _

It had to be. There was no other option available.

Another moment or so, and he felt relief surge through his veins as the shaking lessened, ebbing back into nothing. Holding out his palms outstretched, he felt for the remnants of his magic, and let the tatters of it flow freely into the chilled air.

A soft glow lit the inside of the chamber like the luminous state of a lit pool in the night, the familiar green tint dimmed to pale, silvery sage from lack of proper strength. Letting out a breath at the sight, Loki watched as the cloud of magical energy flowed upwards to reach the ceiling, spreading out to cover the surface in a dim glow of absinthe. The symbiote growled, tendrils reaching out from the catsuit to adhere to the ceiling and cling together, forming a rough approximation of a nest, somewhat circular and clotted into countless strands and knots of webbing for structural stability, to hang high up above the floor.

Climbing into the newly spun refuge, the god watched as the tendrils detached, seeming, to the naked eye, to simply dissolve their bonds to the makeshift bed once he had pulled himself inside. Limbs curled and interlocked as Loki curled into the smallest position his body could afford without pain, the subconscious instinct to maintain as minuscule a target as possible overriding his exhausted senses. The symbiote shifted within, layering Itself against tissue and around the bones that served as a familiar cot in the dark of the cell.

Here, in the dark and the quiet, he could offer the remainder of their discontinued conversation from the mountains, and the symbiote's shared immense dislike of clamorous sound made the idea far too tempting to ignore. Leaning back against the surface of their sleeping space, he shut his eyes and inwardly forced back the unease that threatened to surge up as the symbiote coiled a slender tendril around the cochlear nerves leading to the brain, redirecting nerve impulses into a loop of internal noise. The faint whirring and beeping of the control panel outside faded into obscurity, then finally oblivion as the redirection of electrical impulses cleared away background noise, leaving instead only the familiar symphony of their vessel's internal workings.

_Ssleep now? _

_Only for a little while. I'll take the firsst watch, I do not know if the wardss will hold long enough for uss both to resst unobsserved. _

The quiet mental nudge of acknowledgement ended the conversation, the grip of sleep reaching out to brush long fingers of fading thought against their exhausted mind. This time, the symbiote not resist, and let the urge to rest take hold as It relaxed within.

Loki shifted and turned around, his gaze now redirected to the entry door to the detention section, sharp eyes unwavering, and began the watch.

* * *

The briefing room had long since been emptied of all but the most necessary of personnel, and thus the photograph and record of Jane Foster upon the monitor screen could be observed by the thunder god without fear of displaying too much sentiment to the masses.

Thor stared at the photograph before him, eyes softening as he took in the image of the woman who had run him over. Memories of his brief stay here flooded his mind, nostalgia filling him. To the side, Phil Coulson watched the proceedings with an air of friendly calm, a serene smile plastered across his features as he spoke up.

"As soon as Loki took the doctor, we took the necessary steps to move Miss Foster from the vicinity and relocate her to a safe zone. We've got an excellent observatory in Traunsee that we thought she might like, and she was asked to consult there very suddenly yesterday. A handsome fee, a private plane, very remote and with some of our men as guards just in case. She'll be safe as Fort Nox there."

A look of relief crossed the tanned visage at the words. "Thank you for your help. It's no accident, Loki taking Erik Selvig, and I fear it's entirely my own fault. I dread what he plans for him once he's done; Erik is a good man, he does not deserve this."

"He talks about you a lot, you know, or, he did before all this. You changed his life...actually, you changed everything around here."

The relief changed to a look of faint sadness, a frown forming to wrinkle the broad forehead as Thor shook his head in reply. "They were better as they were, I think. We believe, or pretend, on Asgard that we're more advanced, but we...we come here, shouting and battling like bilgesnipe."

Phil stared in what could only be described as an attempt to frame immense confusion in politeness. "Like what?"

If possible, Thor actually looked more confused than the man before him. "You know: huge, scaly, big strong antlers, terrible breath. You don't have those here? Any at all?"

"...No. At least, I don't think so."

"Good. They are loud, repulsive, and they trample everything in their path as if the hounds of Helheim hunt them down for meat." Nose wrinkled in abject repugnance, he turned to the other side of the ship and gazed out the window, seeming to be deep in thought. After a moment, he spoke up again.

"When I first came to your Earth, Loki's rage followed me here, and your people paid the price for it, in destruction upon an innocent town. And now, it seems, it is so again. In my youth, I courted war. Perhaps I am destined to sow the seeds of destruction wherever I go."

"I wouldn't be so sure; war hasn't fully started yet, and I plan on making sure it never does." Leather boots clomped into the room, echoing loudly in the mostly empty space as Nick Fury came forwards, single eye narrowed in a perpetual scowl as he turned to address Thor. "You think you can make Loki tell us what the Tesseract is?"

"I do not know. Loki's mind is far afield; it's not just power he craves, it's vengeance, blistering and strong, upon me for his perceived misfortunes. There's no pain that would pry away his need from him. Death itself did not deter him from it."

Dark eyes narrowed as a grim expression settled into place, immovable as stone. "You know, a lot of guys think that, until the pain stops. I just need to know how much to up it to." The words, dark and swollen grotesquely with a grisly promise, hung in the air after they were uttered, limp and ready as a set of meat hooks ready to be rammed and sewn through flesh. Thor's expression darkened slightly, brow furrowed in unpleasant realization.

"What is it...that are you asking me to do?"

"I'm asking you this: what are you_ prepared_ to do?" _Are you still willing to stand here and say you're going to help, even if that means doing something you don't like? Even to someone you call family? Are you willing to put Earth first?_

"But Loki is a prisoner." The words already felt weak as he spoke them, the sentence threatening to crumble to pieces, and the man's expression remained bereft of anything remotely resembling pity.

"Tell me then, oh _mighty_ god of thunder, if that's true, why the hell do _I_ feel like he's the only person on this flying boat that actually _wants_ to be here?"

Thor opened his mouth to speak, but found, to his inward shame, that he could offer no answer.

* * *

A dead silence had long since spread through the cage and the surrounding room, and Loki would almost call it calming, if not for the eerie red blink of the camera eye in the corner. The tiny blood-coloured dot was a sharp reminder that he could not fully relax in this place.

To feel overconfidence enough to be secure in enemy territory was to lose half the battle already.

The symbiote was a balm of quiet tranquility against this strange place, squirming and twitching every so often as It slept for the two of them, and a few times Loki became distracted for a split second by the occasional movement under shared skin, watching as the ever-shifting outline of his body's other occupant traced hazy figures and waving lines. Had the action been caused by anything else, perhaps it would have been disturbing, even alarming, to witness, but here it was a sign of such a bizarre intimacy that it was somewhat comforting. He reached out and traced the slow motions, feeling a few tendrils reach up to press against his fingers from underneath in a slight, almost sleepy gesture.

The moment of calm was broken when a faint sound approaching the door to the Detention Section became recognizable as a pair of footsteps, the barely audible noise amplified to hearing range by heightened senses and a rather valid feeling of paranoia. The symbiote squirmed in half-awake discomfort at the sound, evidently made rather ill-humored by the disturbance of all too precious rest, and he reached out a hand to trace figure eights and old runes learned from youth across shared skin in an effort to calm the potential storm of power.

_Who iss it making all the noisse outsside?_

_I'm not ssure yet, let me deduce from what we can tell sso far...Hmm, e__fficient, but not overly hurried pace; confident, it sseemss. Lesss audible than that of the other humanss from earlier, and thosse were all male perssonel. Female, then. They would not ssend jusst anyone down here, they'd fear ssussceptibility even without the Mindgem on hand to usse._

That narrowed down the list of human operatives with a reason to visit, much less at such a strange time, quite considerably.

_Aah, the redhead, then. _

A few moments, and then the human had stepped into the room. Loki turned over in the nest of webbing to watch the arrival, eyes luminous as a cat in the darkened space.

"You know," he offered quietly, "There'ss not very many people who can ssneak up on uss." _And thosse that do rarely live very long. _

To her credit, the lady Romanov did not change expressions, her gaze level, but not quite challenging. The eyes were analytic, burning with a bright intellect and a strange sense of what could only be _purpose_.

"And yet, you figured I'd come anyway." The words, sharp as broken glass, pierce the moment of pause, and establish an introduction.

_Yet you won't tell me why, will you? For a bargain, for a threat, for an offer of relief from whatever horrorss your employerss can utilisse to get the prissoner to sscream out ssecretss?_

Perhaps it was all three, but he could see nothing to confirm it as truth. _Time to sstrike up from thiss end of the conflict, then. __  
_

"We did expect you-" _Truth. Your footsstepss were loud enough to end a very important resst period, now you've made uss angry._

"But not _yet-" Truth. Too early, unlesss it wassn't authorized._

"Not until _after._ Not until whatever torturess untold that Fury and hiss people can concoct had been played out on thiss form, did we expect you to come, and when you did, you would appear in the guisse of a friend, a balm with which to sstop the pain." _Truth. Bitter, very bitter, issn't it?_

"And we would, of coursse, cooperate." _Lie. Your people would not sstop, even if I did talk. _

The look upon the pretty features remained unchanged, but the glittering eyes now held a distinct look of _hurry up_, and so he obliged and fell silent.

_What iss it you came here for, then, if you do not sspeak of it?_

"I want to know what you've gone and done to Agent Barton." _Aah, the Hawk, after all. How touching. _

"What we've done? We've done nothing, except perhapss to expand hiss mind."

Eyes narrowed, the expression changing to add a slight hint of superiority. "And when you've won, hmm? Once you're king of the mountain, what happens then? What happens to his mind, to _him_?"

The slight shake in the words left a veritable minefield of dangerous emotion. "How quaint, iss this _love _we detect, Agent Romanov? Or friendsship, perhapss?"

To her credit, he inwardly conceded, she did not flinch at the words. "Love is for children, friendship is for those who can afford to keep it, and I'm sure we can both safely say we're adults here. No, I owe him a debt, nothing more or less, and I can't pay it if you've got him as a lapdog to play fetch for you."

Taking a moment to analyze the expression on her face, Loki wondered vaguely if she had noticed the increasingly agitated movement of the symbiote yet, given that her words had sparked a level of mounting rage that had only been further helped along by her unfortunate disruption of what he privately thought was a well-deserved nap.

_Would you like her for the firsst coursse when we get out?_, he offered mentally, wondering if it would help change his companion's unhappy mood to a more agreeable state. It _was _still rather hungry, and tired, and upset besides...

_No. _

_Alright, but why not?_

At the surprise that emerged at the resounding statement, the symbiote clarified with a hint of faded eggplant-laced petulance, so slight and yet so strong that the answer seemed almost childish.

_Too sskinny, even if the body iss all musscle, it'ss too sstringy for much meat. She'd be an appetizer...and a poor one at that. _The distinct hint of rotting greenish-yellow mustard held the tang of bitter, scornful snark, and he felt amusement rise up in response.

Looking down at the human, he let out a sigh at the waiting expression. _Time to get out of bed, then. No resst for uss, sso more'ss the pity._

Gripping one side of the uneven hanging cot, the god swung himself over the edge, landing in a crouch on the floor. Taking a seated position on the cell's single bench, he crossed his ankles and let the words flow free, absentmindedly running the pad of one thumb against his wrists to help take the edge off the pain of the handcuffs, and soothe his other half before It lamented the lack of sleep further.

"_Do _tell uss, then, of thiss little debt of yourss."

Appearing to do the action against her better judgment, the assassin reached for a chair in the back of the Detention Section, pulling it up to sit on as she replied. "Before I worked for S.H.I.E.L.D., I, uh...my line of work caused me to make a name for myself. I have what you might call a very _specific _skillset, and I didn't care who I used it for, or on, because it wasn't part of the job description to ask. Then I ended up on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s radar after a job went a bit sideways. See, Agent Barton was sent in to kill me, but he made a different call. I haven't paid him back for it yet."

_Sso it really iss a debt, how anticlimactic. But to sstake everything on him? Perhapss that debt definess ssomething elsse too..._

"Hmm, how _touching_," he drawled, "But tell uss, what will you do if we vow to sspare him from thiss conflict?"

_Perhapss it'ss worth a moment to assk. If sshe'ss really sso fluid in her line of work, and willing to sstake the future of her sspeciess upon the life of one archer, perhapss we can get out of thiss box without too much bloodsshed yet...But no, sshe doessn't look **that **dim-witted. _

True to form, the answer given was quick, precise, and left no room for negotiation. "Not let you out. I still have orders, remember?"

_Alwayss with the orderss, you people are. You change commanding officerss like I changed sskinss on quesstss. _"Well, then, interessting. But no, pleasse continue, we rather like thiss little tale of yourss. Your world hangss in the balance, and yet you would bargain for only thiss one man?"

Blood-bright curls bobbed and weaved around slender shoulders as she shrugged, the very image of nonchalance. "Regimes fall everyday, and the world's still turning. I tend not to weep over that sort of thing, it's inevitable, and I'm Russian...or, I was."

_Sso you come here, assking for a single thread of fate to be plucked out from the tangled entrapment of sso many otherss that are involved in thiss damnable play that'ss mere sstepss away from being a ssuicide misssion. One persson, out of how many otherss of your people that wound up in thiss? Attachment iss dangerouss in thiss game, remember?_

Perhaps she didn't. The symbiote rippled dangerously, tendrils clinging to bones in a grip nearly bruising as whispers of anger at the human before them flickered like candle flames across the exhaustion-darkened mental plane.

_Let'ss give her a little...reminder._

"Tell uss, then, what iss it that you want, little sspider?"

Large, sharp eyes stared back at him, calm and collected in their absolution. "It's not very complicated to understand, really. I've got red in my ledger, and I'd like to wipe it out and start a little...fresher."

Anger bubbled up, sharp and sudden and molten hot, at these words, burning at his frayed emotional restraints. _Sso, you want to play at being cleanssed, do you? Pretend that you can come clean and begin anew, no troubless, no memoriess to drag you under with their dark clawss of vengeful, gnawing thought?_

"Oh, really?," he spat out, rage frothing within, "Can you truly wipe out that much sscarlet from your hisstory, or do you jusst want to _pretend _you can? Can you really sscour from your mind the fate of Drakov'ss daughter, or what of Ssão Paulo? The hosspital fire? Budapesst? Your ledger iss not jusst dripping, it's practically _gusshing _red, and yet you," a laugh broke forth at this, harsh and choked as a beaten hound's growl of pain, "_you _think that ssaving a man no more virtuouss than yoursself will sserve to change _anything_?"

He stood up from the bench, rage thundering through his veins in threads of liquid scarlet flame, head pounding with echoes of the drumbeat of bloodlust.

"Thiss iss nothing more than the mosst basse of foolissh ssentimentalitiess, a child at prayer, begging for forgivenesss after countlesss heckling of wide-eyed peerss more green in undersstanding of the world's engine than fressh grasss! It'ss _pathetic_. You lie and you kill, all in the sservice of liarss and killerss alike, and yet you _sstill_ pretend to be sseperate, to have your own code of conduct, ssomething to make up for the horrors inflicted by your sstained handss, and at that of otherss! They are a part of you, whether you keep them in fondnesss or in hatred, and they will _never _go away."

_I have sspent too long in the field of lying and killing to pretend that I can sstand fully sseperate from it, for I am bound in darknesss, and have accepted it. It accepted me in turn. Why do you sstand here before me, braying of a ssuperiority in moralss that compelss you to erasse that which forged you?_

The rage grew worse, a steady inferno of churning heat that pricked and stung at his insides like a nest woven from briars. The symbiote twisted and writhed, mental cries of rage turning to a sharp, guttural howling that threatened to leave them both blacking out from the force of the inward sound.

He clenched a fist, watching as blood welled up from stinging crescent moons of cuts against pallid skin. Advancing to the front of the cage, he slammed the bound appendage brutally against the glass, watching as a spiderweb of thin, jagged cracks blossomed beneath the broken skin of his knuckles, fracturing the image of the woman on the other side into a hundred splintered fragments. Sharp, glistening needles shot up across the catsuit like rose thorns, distorting their shared figure until the reflection of the mad god on the inside glass could not be clearly discerned.

"Let uss tell you _thiss_, then, Romanov. We won't touch even a ssingle hair upon Barton'ss head, nor sspill a drop of hiss blood. Not until we make him take you apart, sslowly, intimately, in every ssingle damnable way he knowss that you fear and loathe, and when he'll wake up, it'll be jusst long enough to ssee hiss good work, and when he sscreamss, oh, when he _sscreams-_"

He leaned forward against the glass, feeling the cold surface press against his forehead as he let the words loose again. "We'll ssplit hiss skull open, pry it apart bit by bit until hiss mind leakss out through the crackss like water hauled from the well of the Nornss, and while you die from the damnationss he'ss carved you apart with, you can both claw for air and die together. You want him back, we'll return him to you in the armss of Death! _That _iss our bargain to you, you mewling, pharissaic quim!"

She stared at him for a moment, gaze utterly blank, before turning away to walk back to the Detention Section's entry door, her posture shaken, alight with disgust.

"You're a monster, a devil." The whispered statement hung in the air like the head of a battleaxe, ready to fall and cleave the head of an enemy free of the connection to the shoulders and neck.

The laugh that clawed its way free of his throat stung like a handful of spike-laden nettle clusters as he released it. "No, you're right, but only half-right. You _brought _the monsster, here aboard your flying vesssel, and left your sstronghold nothing more than a pen to lock in predator with prey for an impromptu dance with death."

_Sso many devilss wandering here in the skiess together, and yet you paint the prissoner to be the only monsster. Monsster, leviathan, abnormality, call the enemy what you will, but don't sstand there and claim to be better, it will not hold true to either of uss and you know it._

But the look she gave him in response seemed altogether too poised. Her stance had recovered almost miraculously quickly, poised and calm as the still, wave-free surface of the frigid waters of the Arctic Ocean.

"So...Banner, is it? That's your play, then?" The words, despite being posed as a question, are too self-assured to be anything but an answer in themselves.

"...What?" The word managed to escape him before he can hide it behind sharpened teeth, and he cursed inwardly at such a blatant show of confusion to the human before him.

Romanov's eyes flickered with achievement as she tapped the headpiece tucked behind one milky ear. "He means to unleash the Hulk onboard, keep Doctor Banner in his lab. I'm on my way. Send Thor in as well, we need extra manpower in case something goes wrong."

She turned to offer a cold, polite smile, razor-edged, and walked out at a brisk pace. "Thank you," she called out, the sound echoing down the hallway, "for your cooperation today."

The symbiote rumbled in thought, echoing Loki's own inward confusion at the assassin's words. _...Banner? Sshe thought of the sscientisst?_

_No matter, sshe wass wrong. But she'ss pressented uss, albiet unwittingly, with an unexpected form of aid in esscaping here. Let'ss leave her to her asssumptionss, hmm?_

If she was willing to go and stir the pot of an assumed future based on her notion of his plans, why should she be deterred and convinced otherwise? Though, admittedly, he had not thought of releasing Banner's dangerously aggressive other side while the Helicarrier was up in the air himself, letting someone else do it for him without even realizing the mistake was far too perfect to touch, for risk of marring the chances of fruition.

The Detention Section entry door having since closed, he looked up longingly at the nest of webbing hung securely upon the ceiling of the cage, and braced himself to begin the ascent to the tempting embrace of sleep. _I'd ssay we'd more than earned our right to resst thesse weary bones, yess?_

_Yess, but you ssleep firsst thiss time!_

_Are you certain? You were sstill tired earlier when we began the converssation with Romanov._

_You did not ssleep at all,_ It reminded him. A mental nudge directed his attention once more toward their spun bed.

_...Fine._

Climbing back into the makeshift nest, he lay back and closed his eyes. Warding spells were recast and replenished with what remained of his energy reserves, and then he finally let the darkness claim him.


End file.
